It was a warm July evening at the Wilson Family Reunion. Stories of all shapes and sizes flowed freely deep into the moonless night. I looked on in amazement as Allison, my niece, told me all about recovering from surgery to correct her Amblyopia, more commonly known as Lazy Eye.

“I watched the whole thing with my good eye, in the reflection of the Dr.’s glasses! He took the patch off, and there were two strings hanging out of the corner of my eye. He grabbed ahold of the strings, one in each hand. I watched him tug and pull the strings as he rotated my eyeball into position,” I gasped in disbelief. She continued, “and that’s not even all! When he had it lined up with the other eye, he very carefully tied off the strings!” “What?” I interrupted. “Wait, I’m not done,” she said, “then he snipped the strings, so they don’t show!” “So the strings are still there?” I questioned as she nodded.

“Yes! Then he sent me home to recover with no expectations, other than a few follow-up visits over the next couple of months. It happened several weeks later as I was getting ready for the day. All of the sudden, everything just looked, well… different and strange. I wasn’t sure what was going on.” She said rotating her half-open hand in front of her with intense focus and a look of amazement and wonder. “It was something I’d never seen before! It was startling and overwhelming. I didn’t know what to do, so I shook my head and blinked until it went away. But it kept happening again and again over the following week.” “What could it be?” I wondered.

She continued, “at my next appointment, the nurse stopped half-way through the vision test and scurried off to find the Dr. He was the one who explained what was happening. “Allison, what you’re your seeing is the third-dimension.””

“Wow? You’d never seen in 3 D before? I never even knew,” I said. “Yeah, well, I never knew there was more to what I’d been seeing, my entire life!” She continued, “the Dr. went on to tell me that people who have this surgery after the age of 5 will never see in 3 D, but for some reason I could. And the nurse just stood there by the door, looking on, with a big smile.”

“Wait. What? Weren’t you like, 25 at the time,” I asked? “Yes, and the Dr said he has no explanation as to why I can see in 3 D, other than divine intervention,” she said as I begged for more.

She went on to tell me how each eye sends its own signal to the brain, there they are reconciled into a single 3-dimensional image. The brain can do this because both eyes are focused on the same thing, yet each signal is of a different point of view. “It’s funny how having different views, even if they’re only just a few inches apart can change everything,” she said. “Yes, yes it is,” I replied, searching for the bits and pieces of my brain she’d just blown.

She continued to explain, “when someone has this condition the eyes are not able to focus on the same thing. The brain receives a signal from each eye, but it can’t process them because they don’t match. To make sense, the brain deletes the signal from the wandering eye, leaving a 2-dimensional view of the world.

When someone has this surgery, the eyes are brought back into alignment. What’s more, the signals match so everything is in place for a 3-D view. The problem is, the brain has ignored one signal for so long, it loses the ability to process both into a 3 D image. So, most people who have the surgery go through their lives continuing to see the world in 2-dimensions, even though everything is in place for a 3rd.”

“You mean, the only thing that changes is how the world sees them, not how they see the world?” I asked. “Yes, exactly! But for some reason, my brain was able to rewire itself and process both images, and that has changed everything.”

“What a blessing! God must have a plan for you,” I said truly knowing the impact it’s had on her. Since the operation she has completed an 18-month mission, learned to drive, has gone back to school and is only months away from a bachelor’s degree.

I couldn’t help but get lost in thought as I drifted off to sleep under the starry sky. I couldn’t help but make the comparison of Allison’s literal view of the world to my figurative view of the world. Panic set in as I asked myself, “have I been living life in 2-dimenions without knowing?”

Then it hit me, we are all born into a 2-dimensional world. It’s one of the many things we have in common. Everyone comes from somewhere, and none of us choose where that is. The image of the world we piece together originates from that place and it’s shaped by everything we encounter on our path. Everything, from; home life, financial stability, education, community, mores, values, trust, love, or their absence. This image we build piece by piece becomes our “dominant” view and will always be. By default, this view is 2-dimensional as it’s the only image we have. Good or bad, right or wrong, this is our truth as it’s the only thing we know.

Sooner or later we confront others with different points of view, or who’s dominant images are different from ours. Sometimes they are similar enough to fit right in. But many times, these pictures can be so different, our brains can’t process them, so it deletes them.

We must remember, other’s points of view are a completely different image than ours, and must to be treated as such. We learn of others experiences one word, one sentence, and one story at a time. These snippets are not full pictures and are not meant to be processed into our own dominant view.

But rather than deleting, discounting, or forcing them into places they don’t fit, we must save them. We must build a completely separate image just as we built our own, piece by piece. This new image is built by listening with patience, and understanding without judgement. This requires a lot of work. But if we persist, it becomes a secondary view of the world, or third, or fourth, etc., there is no limit.

This process can be threatening. Maybe we are threatened by the possibility of being wrong, or right, or being different. Maybe we are uncomfortable with seeming more human as we expose our hearts, or less human as we justify our actions.

These images can be as big as the racial divide, or as small as a preference for Coke or Pepsi. Once we understand who others are, what they see and why they see it that way, we begin to see their picture, and we can’t help but gain understanding, even if it’s just a little. Once we understand, something amazing happens. We process the image as a whole and it becomes a part of our own truth giving it depth, dimension, and meaning. We see things as we have never seen them before.

Yet, many times we prefer to stay in 2-dimensions, and I wonder why. I wonder if we truly have lost the ability to process other’s images. I wonder if the ability is still there but it’s lying dormant, waiting for an image to process. Maybe we are afraid of change. Maybe we’re just lazy and refuse to put forth the effort required to listen and understand.

This new perspective may be strange and unfamiliar at first, so much that we blink and shake it away. But the beauty and depth of our new truth cannot be denied. Over time we find ourselves perceiving things we never knew existed, even though they’ve been there all along. This depth of understanding changes everything!

Copyright © 2020 Ward E Wilson