Many people have eyes, yet when they refuse to see, they are effectively blind.
We often ignore what unsettles us. Sometimes we recognise reality and still turn away. In psychology, this avoidance is called cognitive dissonance: the quiet defence mechanism that protects our comfort when truth feels too heavy. Comfort zones, routines, and personal boundaries slowly build invisible walls around us.
The other day, walking along a crowded London street, I noticed two children struggling with grocery bags far too heavy for their small hands. Their hunger dissolved into the city’s noise. People passed by. No one stopped. Not because they were cruel — simply because they did not want to notice.
The city kept walking.
The children kept carrying.
The sky kept pretending nothing was happening.
London has always known how to hide its wounds behind beautiful streets.
This is how blindness grows: not through malice, but through convenience.
News channels show us hunger, poverty, wars, disasters. We scroll, we sigh, and then we return to our tea, our screens, our safe rooms. The discomfort fades within seconds. Psychologists describe this as emotional insulation — a way of protecting ourselves from feeling too much.
But what are we protecting, exactly?
Silence is comfortable. Ignoring is easy. Seeing requires effort.
And seeing hurts.
Societal blindness does not only live in tragedies on the news. It lives next door.
In the lonely neighbour.
In the exhausted worker.
In the pair of eyes silently asking for help on the street.
We notice — and then we look away.
As someone who writes, I often feel that writing is simply a refusal to stay silent. Words may not change the world, but they can disturb sleep. Sometimes a single sentence can act as an empathy spark — a brief moment that cracks the shell of indifference.
And maybe that is enough.
Because courage does not always mean grand gestures. Sometimes it is just this: to keep our eyes open when it would be easier to close them.
Blindness is comfortable.
But comfort is often paid for with someone else’s suffering.
And that price is higher than we think.
