Where's your gaze?

I asked my son's eye doctor when my son would be able to tell us what his tunnel vision was. We know he has tunnel vision, when would he be able to tell us what he couldn't see around the edges? The doctor said something profound.

The doctor said that my son would never be able to tell us where his blind spots are. Because to him, they aren't blind spots. It's not like he sees black or sees through a tunnel. He just sees what he sees and doesn't see the rest. Like I don't think of what I'm not seeing behind me, he never thinks about what he's not seeing next to him or in front of him or where ever the spots without vision are. And most of the time his brain fills in the blanks for him based on what it remembers seeing moments before. 

This has caused problems for my son when, for example, he is SURE that the foot rest on the rocker is up because he saw me reclining as he approached, so he puts his hand out confidently to climb on to my lap, only to discover with a horrible thud to the ground that, since leaving his field of vision, the foot rest had been pushed in and I'd sat up so I could pick him up. 

His vision reminds me that sometimes as humans, we need to remember to turn our gaze away from the things we normally see and look for the things we don't see. Because if we don't turn our gaze elsewhere, those things, those places where we are misunderstanding, will never be understood. We all have tunnel vision. And we all can be tripped up by our misunderstandings.