Two thirds of the ability to see requires the ability to turn a blind eye. When the stage lights are concentrated towards a tree on the stage, everyone’s gaze turns towards that tree. They see not the princess falling, or the prince valiantly saving her from her doom. They see not the guy scratching his nose five rows down, or the red seats that seemed so bright when they walked in. They see a tree, its branches straight and strong, leaves ever so green.

As is life. We see what our hearts and minds have been trained to focus on. If our brains were to process every photon that hit our retinas, they would have malfunctioned within seconds of us opening our eyes. Without the ability to recognise patterns, to say this a tree, a word, a face, and ignore the rest of the millions of megabytes of information we take in, our eyesight would be meaningless.