VISION, THE WONDERFUL SENSE ​
 
"I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW THAT THE RAIN HAS STOPPED. I CAN SEE ALL THE OBSTACLES IN MY WAY. THAT BLACK CLOUD THAT HAD BEEN BLINDING ME IS GONE AND NOW IT'S A BRIGHT, SUNNY DAY" ​
 
This is the chorus of an American folk song...And when I hear it, I am filled with optimism and remember a day when I was driving in the country, with the green grass, the beech trees and a sky so blue it looked like a painting. This memory is so vivid that I feel like reliving those moments. How bright was that day? What a wonderful sun... Its light, traveling 150 million kilometers, reaches the retina of our eye and allows us to see. We cannot see the individual molecules or photons, but we feel their effect as warmth and see their brilliance as light. We rarely think about photons, but they are the physical matter that falls on our retinas. Everything lights up then and WE SEE. ​
 
But have you ever thought about what a miracle it is that keeps repeating itself? Leonardo da Vinci thought about it and said: "Who would have thought that such a small space could contain the images of the Universe?" How nicely had he put it? It seems almost unbelievable that our tiny eyes can actually take in the Universe. Sight is indeed a wonderful sense. Charles Darwin, author of The Origin of Species, said: "To suppose that the eye, with all its ability to focus at various distances, to admit different amounts of light, and to distinguish shapes and colors, is not a result of natural selection, is the most absurd thing imaginable.' Correct. The eye and sight is a miracle.

​ Nikos Vakalis
Director of Ophthalmology Clinic
Naval Hospital of Crete