Vision

You see….actually…I think that’s precisely what I intended to say: ‘You see!’ Well, you do see, don’t you? I must presume that to be the case with the most imminent certitude if, in fact, you are currently reading this inscription of a micro-monologue of mine. Otherwise, how would you be seeing it presently? I suppose someone could be reading this to you and you not seeing it, but then, at least, you’d be hearing it. And if, in fact, you are like our dear friend Helen Keller, and you be neither seeing nor hearing it, I don’t know how you are ascertaining this because, as far as I’m aware, this precise collocation of ideas has not been printed in Braille just yet. Nonetheless, I will assume you are, indeed, seeing these very words in front of you, you see. Now, really look at them. No, I mean REALLY look at them. Do you see? It is exactly the seeing part to which I am referring, not so much the object of your vision. In fact, it will do just as well to look around you; look at your hand, look at the wall, look at the mirror and try not be be aghast. If you do look at the mirror, it won’t be you that you see. It will be a reflection of light - that was reflecting off of you initially - that bounced off the curves of your skin and shirt, hit the mirror and bounced back into fovea, and pupil, and cornea. Then, if that weren’t miraculously enough, that light did something amazing; it caused a cascade of electrical stimulations to jolt up something we’ve aptly decided to call the occipital nerve. These impulses sent waves of charges through your brain, that then interpreted the signals contained in the waves/particles of light to give you an image of what you ‘saw’ - in your brain, not really in your eye. Your eye was more like the funnel at the top of recycling sorter center that all the various random bits of glass, aluminum, and plastic, and paper drop in, and your brain more like the actual sorting part, though this is a very crude analogy. You see, we never see something exactly directly, precisely as it is. We see it as it is interpreted in our mind. But to dispense with any extreme notions of subjectivity that may arise preemptively, this does not lend itself to fact that reality is subjective, but rather that we only see in part and not in full. I don’t see myself exactly as I really am when I look in the mirror, but it is an extraordinarily close approximation, and that is good enough for behaving properly in the world. When I look in the mirror to brush my teeth, I don’t accidentally end up brushing my hair. I am able to see well enough to move my hand to the oral cavity and not the apex of my noggin. But again, it is the majesty and wonder of actually being able to see anything at all that is the awful, awesome thing itself. I can see! I really can see! Now if I could have the eyes of faith to see what I really can’t see, then I would really, REALLY be seeing indeed!