For fifty one years Bob Edens was blind. He felt his way through five decades of darkness until one day a skilled surgeon performed a complicated operation and, for the first time, Bob Edens had sight. He found it overwhelming. ‘I never would have dreamed that yellow is so beautiful,’ he said. ‘I just don’t have the words to express it. But red is my favourite colour. I can see the shape of the moon -and I like nothing better than seeing a jet plane flying across the sky leaving a vapour trail. And of course, there are the sunrises and sunsets. And at night I look at the stars in the sky and the flashing light. You could never know how wonderful everything is.’
The sad thing, though, is that most of us do know it, but because we’ve never been blind, we’ve lost the capacity to be filled with wonder.