How To See the Truth in a World Gone Blind

Isaac Lidsky, Eyes Wide Open: Overcoming Obstacles and Recognizing Opportunities in a World That Can't See Clearly

Isaac Lidsky first hit the national stage as a child actor. One of the inaugural cast from Saved By the Bell: the New Class, he had high expectations… which were largely dashed when NBC discovered they couldn’t cast new actors in old roles. He struggled to find his feet, and had nearly done so, when life dealt him a second blow: a diagnosis of retinitis pigmentosa. He was doomed to spend his life going blind.

Lidsky’s first book is cross-marketed in health, business, and self-help sections, none of which encompasses the author’s level of ambition. Lidsky mixes scholarship, autobiography, and philosophy in a book that deals deeply with what it means to see the world. Our eyes only provide raw data; if we want to see, we see with our minds. Unfortunately, at times, Lidsky also proves the adage that there’s none so blind as one who will not see.

Network interference, and his already failing eyesight, derailed Lidsky’s acting career at an age when other boys still wonder what they want to be when they grow up. But his parents leveraged his television prominence to start a charity advancing retinitis pigmentosa research (there’s still no treatment or cure.) At the same time, Lidsky graduated Harvard Law School, clerked for a Supreme Court Justice, and launched a Manhattanite career younger than I even started college.

At this stage, and throughout this book, Lidsky mixes memoir, and lessons learned from both success and failure, with hard scholarship. His years as a law clerk trained him well in methods of research and writing: this book reads like a more seasoned author’s product, without the digressions and cow paths most business professionals’ first books face. Lidsky lets facts drive his argument, and when he interjects personal philosophy, he knows the purpose it serves.

Except… this taut writing lets Lidsky direct our attention, so it’s tough to notice what he leaves out. Just one example: In one chapter, Lidsky’s TV career is puttering out. His character proves less popular than Screech, and with network hopes pinned on this tentpole franchise, they need numbers. Lidsky finds his Hollywood dream turning into a real disappointment. Then—shazam, he’s nineteen, attending Harvard Law, determined to live on his own. What happened between?

Isaac Lidsky

This diversion happens so fast, I just assumed he was telling his story non-linearly for improved effect. So I forgot it. Only when I consulted my notes did I realize he just basically dropped the thread. Maybe he left it because that story basically fizzled, and there’s nothing left to describe. Or maybe he’s whitewashing something truly horrific. I have no idea, because he doesn’t tell us. It’s tough to evaluate what never gets said.

Please don’t mistake me. Lidsky uses sight and blindness as remarkable metaphors for personal and professional triumph. He tells stories, for instance, about trying to negotiate Cambridge streets with failing eyes, and later, D.C. streets completely blind. This provides insights into screening meaningless data from real content that provides him literal and figurative direction. His transition from normal, if famous, teenager, to ambitious, self-directed adult, provides lessons many adults I know could stand to learn.

Yet Lidsky apparently thinks, as many self-help memoirists do, that his successes are portable; to achieve Lidsky-like success, simply employ Lidsky’s checklist of lessons. He apparently overlooks ways he started from a position of advantage. Consider his acting career, which commenced when his parents drove him to auditions for local TV commercials. Later, they flew him cross-country, on their own nickel, to audition for NBC. He was coached to consider his own success basically inevitable.

Years later, burned out on lawyering at an age when peers were paying down student loans, Lidsky took a career aptitude survey and determined his correct career was, ahem, CEO. Nice work if you can get it… which he did. Because a well-heeled friend purchased him a foundering Florida tile company. This doesn’t discredit Lidsky’s accomplishments: he turned a building subcontractor around during the housing downturn. But maybe I could, too, if somebody fronted me the money.

I found plenty to like in this book. Lidsky’s principles of controlling what we see by yoking our thoughts, have significant merit. But they apply to him too: it really feels like he doesn’t grasp how others ensured he didn’t start from zero. Like other self-help memoirs I’ve reviewed, this is a case of “take what you need and leave the rest.” Because you aren’t Isaac Lidsky, sadly, and Isaac Lidsky isn’t you.