The Power of Vision: How We See Shapes How We Live

Seeing isn't really about the eyes. It's about the brain deciding what the eyes mean. On this episode of Illuminating Being, my co-host Dr. Keith Somers, a pediatrician in Pittsburgh, and I took on vision, the sense we lean on most and examine least.

Keith opened with newborn development. Babies can see at birth, but barely; they're nearsighted and leaning hard on their other senses. What their brains are doing, though, is gathering visual cues, especially faces. That early imprinting becomes recognition, bonding, safety. And it never stops being interpretation. Two children raised in the same household can watch the same moment and perceive it completely differently, depending on temperament, timing, and emotional wiring. I can confirm that finding from my own kitchen table. What we "see" is always filtered through memory and emotion.

That filter shows up at every meal, because we see our food before we taste it. Color, texture, plating, all of it matters. A baby in a highchair playing with spaghetti or squashing berries isn't misbehaving; that's sensory exploration, and it's how a child builds memory and trust with food. It's easy to rush past those moments worrying about the mess. The mess is the point. Keith also reminded me how much relationship gets built through shared looking: a toddler learning "cow says moo" over a picture book isn't just hitting a language milestone, they're bonding through repetition and curiosity.

We talked about nature as our first teacher of visual beauty, spring blossoms, birds overhead, the ordered look of a family meal. Keith recommended Life in Five Senses by Gretchen Rubin, and mentioned the Forks Over Knives cookbook, where vibrant food photography reminds you that how food looks shapes what we choose to eat. We closed with a line from Thich Nhat Hanh's How to Eat, about how a few settled seconds of really looking at the people we eat with is enough to truly see a friend.

This week, pick two. Read a picture book slowly with a child and name the images together. Slow down at one meal and actually notice the colors on the plate. Walk outside and look up at the light coming through the trees. Or pause on an ordinary moment, your kid's laugh, sun on the table, and take a mental snapshot with some gratitude attached. Don't just look. See.