Helen Keller wished she could regain her vision at least for three days so she could see the things she loved so much. But actually, many precious things are invisible. We can only feel and imagine those invisible precious things. 

For example, we cannot survive without air, yet we are unable to see it. It is the same with the wind. In her exquisite poem, “Who Has Seen the Wind?” Christina Rossetti writes, “Who has seen the wind?/ Neither I nor you/ But when the leaves hang trembling/ The wind is passing through.” No one has seen the wind, and yet we know the wind blows when we see the leaves are quivering and the boughs are swaying.

Love is another precious thing we cannot see. When we find our pupils dilating and our heart pounding at the sight of someone, we know we are in love. Honor, too, is invisible. Only when someone sacrifices himself to save others, do we see honor in his deed. Dreams, too, come to us only when we give up seeing and close our eyes.

It is true that the unseen is mysterious. It was no wonder God in the Old Testament forbade His worshippers from making idols of Himself. Perhaps God knew that at the very moment He was seen as an idol, He would lose His mystique.

Strangely, however, we always want to “see” something before we believe it. Perhaps that is why we have the maxim, “Seeing is believing.” For example, we want to see some miracles before we believe in God. Just like Doubting Thomas who had to see the scars on Jesus’ palms before he believed in his resurrection, we, too, always want to see physical proofs. Perhaps that is why humans have made so many idols and worshipped them against God’s wish. That is also why we, who are unable to see inner beauty, tend to seek physical perfection. And that is why we desperately want to become handsome or pretty, and why cosmetic surgeries are rampant in our society. Consequently, we now witness unbearable shallowness everywhere in our society.

Not only good things but bad things are also often invisible. For example, we cannot see poison gas. Only when people begin collapsing, we presume that there is a gas leak and they must have inhaled the poison gas. We cannot see “hate” either. Only when someone frowns at us or slanders us, we know he hates us. Then our heart sinks in dismay.

In his moving poem, “Skating Lesson,” Zack Rogow writes, “I tugged my 6-year-old around the link. ... / My daughter flows along/ next to me, learning to skate/ as I hold her hands. ... / Just yesterday I told her/ I was leaving her mommy./ “How do you spell “HATE?”/ she asked me afterwards/ scribbling a note to me/ on a scroll of register tape.”

The little girl in the poem is initiated into adulthood as she learns how to spell “HATE,” that is, how to pin down the meaning of “HATE” which is invisible but devastating. Or perhaps she knows how to spell it already and deliberately wants to chide her father. Indeed, if you did not know how to spell “HATE,” how could you write, “How do you spell HATE?” in the first place?

Nevertheless, we are always attracted to something flashy and pretentious, blind to invisible but precious things. For example, we are irresistibly attracted to money and accept bribes, unable to perceive the inevitable, disastrous outcome. Indeed, how many people have ruined their professional careers by taking bribes? Why do we not realize that there are things in life more precious than money, such as mutual trust, moral support and everlasting friendship?

We are also hopelessly attracted to gorgeous or handsome people and marry them or have affairs with them, blinded to the fatal flaws in personality hidden beneath physical attraction. Physical beauty is ephemeral, but inner beauty is everlasting.

In her poem, “If you Must Love Me,” Elizabeth Barrett Browning aptly points out, “If thou must love me, let it be for nought/ Except for love’s sake only. Do not say/ ‘I love her for her smile ― her look ― her way/ Of speaking gently, ― for a trick of thought/ That falls in well with mine, and certes brought/ A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’ ― / For these things in themselves, Beloved, may/ Be changed, or change for thee.”

Yet we witness every day that our politicians are hopelessly going down due to their fatal attraction to gorgeous women or money that delights their eyes. Thus we must ponder, “Which one is more important between things that only please our eyes and things that give us celestial bliss?” The former is evanescent while the latter is eternal. We need to suppress our human nature that is inclined to mundane pleasures and seek heavenly bliss instead.

By Kim Seong-kon 

Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. ― Ed.