How You See the World

April 4, 2008, 11:45 am; posted by
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We see things differently, you and me. Literally.

That’s because your eyes work together, allowing you to perceive the world as it truly exists, in all three spatial dimensions. But like feuding brothers in a sandbox, my eyes do not share, they refuse to cooperate. Stereoblindness makes me incapable of knowing just what it is the rest of you see — or more accurately, how it is you see. My brain basically takes input from only one eye at a time, and although its marvelous compensations have somehow allowed me to be an excellent wide receiver, something is still missing — something I might never truly understand.

This knowledge might explain a lot about my childhood — from my subpar batting average in Grasshopper baseball (my mediocre left eye faced the pitcher) to my B- in art class. But beyond this enlightment, like the Apostle before me, I appreciate the utility of a physical condition that can double as metaphor.

If I were lazier, here I would churn out a few hundred words of tripe about the importance of perspective, how one alone can never see as richly as two united, and how we must take time to think about how others see the world. Maybe we could close by holding hands, at least virtually, as we solemnly promised to forever respect each other’s diversity. But I respect your intelligence more than our differences, so I will spare you such a paint-by-numbers conclusion. It’s not what I do.

But this is a piece about hope. Oliver Sacks, the brilliant neurologist and author, wrote in The New Yorker about a woman with a similar problem who was able to train, or retrain, her brain to properly see. An NPR story on the subject concluded, “[W]hile baby brains are more malleable than adult brains, adult brains are not frozen in place. They can change.”

Now I have been generally suspicious of the human mind’s capacity to change; I happily pay it abstract tribute seasoned with anecdotal evidence: Change? Certainly, people can change! Why, I know a man who heard God’s voice in jail and left his old life to become a pastor! It’s just that it happens so rarely, you see, and you can’t necessarily expect it…

This is an understandable position, bred by past disappointments, and incubated by the soul-deadening cynicism that hides in the guise of realism. But at its core, I think, is an unholy despair about life, a pessimism that goes beyond an acknowledgment of man’s fallen condition and slips into a knee-jerk doubt that anything of worth can be accomplished. It is ultimately incompatible with the Gospel that called its earliest converts from lives of exploitation and persecution, and taught them how to truly walk in abiding love, to the point of death.

Mankind will never bring heaven to earth. But just as I hope that my eyes can one day be trained to work together, I pray to keep that aspect of childlike faith that can look at any situation — at every man and woman — with vision undimmed by the eye-crossing lessons of the past, and repeat, in response to the words of Christ: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”


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