Seeing is Believing
How we see the world is determined by our minds. This is true and one of the important realizations required for empathy, sanity, and greater awareness. I like to illustrate concepts like this with stories, even if the stories are fictional.
Once upon a time, there were three small boys, about ten years of age I would estimate. The boys were skipping through a neighbor’s garden and decided to make some trouble, this is a thing small boys do. “Tomato fight!” yelled Gipetto. The three boys must have thrown a hundred of the neighbor’s prize tomatoes before running to the village seashore, where they sat on a rock wall overlooking the tiny harbor and sea.
“You are covered in green and smell like mothers lasagna!” Gipetto tells the others excitedly. Both Mario and Luigi look at Gipetto quizzically. “What?” they say together.
“You are covered in green from all the tomatoes,” Gipetto repeats. Mario and Luigi laugh hysterically, “Tomatoes are red!”
This all happened in the late eighteenth century before color blindness had been discovered, and the young boys had many conversations about Gipetto and what he claimed to see. Mario was adamant that Gipetto was lying but Luigi always believed him.
I do have to tell you that this upset Gipetto for most of his life, he could never accept that his best friend Mario thought he was a liar. They argued throughout their childhood and most of their adult life, but Mario continued to say that it was impossible for Gipetto to see green instead of red and that Gipetto was either lying or incorrectly identifying the color that he was seeing. But Gipetto knew that he was not seeing the color red and began to doubt his sanity. All very troubling. Quite serious to Gipetto. The only relief Gipetto got was from his friend Luigi who believed him.
I wonder why Luigi could believe Gipetto and Mario could not. Hmm.
Anyway, and quite serendipitously, John Dalton wrote about color blindness when Gipetto was in his late fifties. He read the accounts scrupulously and shared them with Mario and Luigi.
“After all these years, you were telling the truth,” Mario said with a reflective tone. Perhaps for the first time realizing that Gipetto had never been lying.
“Why was it so hard for you to believe me?” Gipetto asked, with more tenderness in his heart than anger.
“Because it was not proven,” Mario answered.
“To believe me this thing had to be proven?” Gipetto asked.
Mario thought about this and it was many days later when he discovered that he could not believe his friend until his mind accepted the thing his friend was telling him could be true. It had to be proven. Mario needed an outside authority to tell his mind this thing was possible, and therefore true. How odd, he thought. Why must his mind tell him something is true before he could accept what his best friend told him? He decided to ask Luigi, who had always believed Gipetto.
“Luigi, why did you believe Gipetto all these years?” Mario asked.
“Because he told me it was so.” Luigi answered, “And I trusted him.”
“Is it really so simple for you, you never questioned how he could see something completely different from what we saw with our own eyes?” Mario was getting emotional.
“My poor Mario, is it so hard for you to accept that our eyes may see things differently from others?” Luigi asked with sincere concern for his friend.
It was. Mario could not resolve this dilemma for many years. But he finally did, and it gave him peace.