The story of Bartimaeus is really a story about us. The blind man does not have a name. Bartimaeus simply means "the son of Timaeus," meaning "unclean." Perhaps the blind man has your name or my name. We experience darkness and blindness and we cry out for light, don't we? When we know what life should be, when in our mind's eye we can see what God intends, but we cannot make it happen, then we ask for God's mercy, which is a leap of blind trust, and that is good because it means that we have a vision, even though our sight may be blurry or myopic.