We always expect people to be as they were the last time we saw them. Even if that was 50 years ago. They do not age or change while we are not seeing them. That is, not in our mind. Intellectually, we know that they cannot be the same - but emotionally, we do not. Then, when really seeing them again, we react with surprise over the change. The mental image does not coincide with reality.
It's similar with people we know from telephone, email or only by hearsay. If we don't know how they look, we still form an image in the mind, and the image never coincide with their real appearance. When we finally see them, it takes some time for the image to adjust to reality. During that time, it is as if we don't really know them - even if we felt we knew them before seeing them. The person we knew is suddenly someone else.
The same goes for places or things we know, or know of, but have not seen. We imagine how they look.
Such visualisation is unavoidable. We cannot turn it off. It is a compulsion of the mind. If we don't know how someone or something looks, we imagine what we do not know. It doesn't matter if it is wrong - it doesn't matter if we KNOW it is wrong - we just have to do it.
But how does a blind individual visualise? Someone who has always been blind and cannot possibly know what seeing really is. How can you imagine a visual impression when you cannot grasp what a visual impression is - or light, or darkness, or colour?
Yet, in some way they do imagine, even if it cannot be in a normal sense visual. Their mind is not blind, their brain possesses the same compulsion to put something in the place where true information is missing. They do imagine, although their images are certainly different, and they never have to confront an image with reality. That is, unless their blindness can be cured. If and when that happens, it must be a shock. It is not about one person, place, or thing - it is the whole visual reality suddenly washing over them! Everything and everyone are different from how they have perceived them. Perhaps even seeing itself is different from what they thought. A miraculous birth of a world. But also the death of another. Would it be a bliss or a tragedy?
I have had patients who, after 4 or 5 decades as blind, suddenly get vision. It's a revolution for the mind. For some of them it is indeed a bliss, but for not so few it is traumatic, in certain cases even leading to suicide.
It is not easy to replace a well-known view of the world, one in which you have learned to feel comfortable, with a different one. Maybe you will never feel at home with anything again.
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