The Main Event

Several years ago, the first people in the world who were blind from birth underwent successful cataract surgery. One can imagine the wonder with which, for the first time in their life, they saw a rosebud, a sturdy oak, a sunset, an ocean wave. One young woman was so overwhelmed by her first glimpse of the world around her that she closed her eyes and kept them shut for days. When, finally, she opened her eyes again, she could only say, over and over again, “O God! How beautiful!” But not everything was beautiful for these patients. The world turned out to be bigger and more complex than they expected. Unable to judge distances, they reached for things a mile away and cracked their shins on furniture they perceived only as patches of color. Seeing themselves for the first time in the mirror made many of them unhappy and self-conscious. Some wouldn’t go outside. The father of one young woman wrote her surgeon that his…