Picturing the void
People often say the void must be a lack of colour, a kind of "black" stretching out forever. Or the opposite: since it is empty, there is simply nothing to picture. Both ideas strike me as wrong, and I think I have found a way, open to anyone, of conceptualising the void.
A warm-up exercise
To get close to what a blind person perceives day to day, let's start with the edge of our own vision. When you think about it, what shape does it take?
- a square image?
- a rectangular image?
- a double-circle image?
Technically, the pupil lets light through a rounded opening, and the retina is arranged as a circle too. In theory, then, we should perceive something like a double circle.
In practice, though, it is impossible to see the edges of our vision. Try it: you will never find the border, it always slips away. A picture can be a starting point, but it stays an approximation. Think instead of a television. The image on the screen is our sight. The edges of the screen are the shape of that sight. And what surrounds the set, the room around it, is the void. It is precisely thanks to what lies beyond the edge that we can define the void.
Defining the void
Let's go back to the warm-up. Picture what lies past the edges of your field of view. Try to see what is behind you using your eyes alone, without turning around and without a reflective surface. Giving up? Is there "nothing" at that part of your sight? There it is, you have just imagined the void for the first time.
Still not coming? Return to the television and the room around it. What would be left if you could actually see the edges of your vision and then look past them? Focus on that "beyond". For some people it takes a little time, and that is fine.
A closing thought
As I said at the start, we often imagine the void as black or white, when it is neither. A person blind from birth has never had access to the eye's functions, depending on the nature of their condition. Deafness helps here, because it is easier to grasp. Imagine being deaf from birth: you do not hear nature, or the wind, or the cars going down the street. What you perceive is not a "silence", it is an absence of sound, plainly. The void, for sight, works the same way. It is not black or white, it is an absence of vision.
If, after this exercise, you still cannot conceptualise the void, write to me and we will go through the reasoning step by step. And if it worked and the result surprised you, feel free to share the article.
