Amid age-long arguments of philosophers, brain experts, and more about the extent to which we see the world as it is, by faith I commit to the reality of a world external to my perceptions. But slamming a bike lock into my eye also underscored for me that we see that world only in part, as if, to echo the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13, through a mirror dimly.

By the day after the injury, my eye hurt and qualified nicely as a “black eye” even as nothing otherwise seemed amiss. That morning my wife Joan and I headed out on what seemed a routine jaunt to work together from the road. Until mid-afternoon at the Minneapolis airport. At the same time as we were temporarily trapped by ripple effects of a delayed flight, I suddenly realized that no, sun glare couldn’t account for the frequent flashes on my right no matter where I was, even in the restroom.

Suddenly it hit me: injured eye. I Googled: symptoms like mine could be no big deal–or could signal retinal tear and “medical emergency.” Should we risk breaking airport security and maybe lose another flight while hoping to figure out where in Minneapolis to try to get immediate care? It was getting late. A supportive Joan who works regularly with the Montana health care system phoned Kalispell, our ultimate destination, and got me an appointment for early next morning.

When at last we got on the plane, it seemed I was literally glimpsing the image shouted out by the man born blind after Jesus healed his sight (John 9): I saw people as trees walking. Floaters dangled over my vision and bright flashes radiated into them whenever I blinked.

Next morning the care was, thank God, superb, as was the news: I had experienced not a retinal tear but a vitreous detachment, which afflicts perhaps half of us over 60 when the vitreous at the back of the eye detaches from retina. There can be complications and follow-up is important, but treatment is often tincture of time.

That proved true for me, as several ophthalmology visits confirmed. Day by day the floaters and flashes faded. What startled me was this: the eye has mostly not repaired itself; this is not how the symptoms resolve. Rather, the brain learns to filter out the floaters and flashes.  I sense this when I’m particularly tired, in certain light conditions, or if I make a deliberate effort to focus on the symptoms. Then again I can sometimes see the floaters snaking across my vision or a flash firing.

This power of the brain to decide what I will and won’t see is quite striking. It has taught me that in fact I don’t reliably see what’s in front of me. Rather, I see what my brain’s endless synaptic communications across 100 billion neurons send into my conscious awareness.

It also turns out that all of us have a blind spot. A small part of our eye is blind at the point where optic nerve connects with brain. Our brain fills in the missing information.

If a brain can so effectively detour my and our consciousness around actual physical realities, then how much more must it make choices about what I will and won’t see as the endless welter of environmental, cultural, economic, and political stimuli flood in. And how regularly must my perspectives be based on simply not seeing even the countless floaters and flashes of life that do exist despite my being oblivious to them.

I wonder if the fact that we see only with injured or partly blind eyes is worth pondering as a few billion of us seem to be concluding that my job is mostly to proclaim and yours is mostly to submit to my amazingly perfect visions.

—Michael A. King is publisher and president, Cascadia Publishing House LLC. He writes the column “Unseen Hands” for Mennonite World Review, which publishes many of his Kingsview & Co posts.