There are two eyes so that one can close one eye and look inward.

The eyes, which many animals commonly have two of.
Fish, insects, dinosaurs, and humans—for some reason, they all have two eyes. This was one of Suguri's childhood worries, but embarrassingly, he learned it was a big misunderstanding after becoming a proper student.

The ones that have two are only easy-to-understand creatures like us vertebrates and fish; if you go outside of that, they're not two at all. Spiders have eight, scallops have nearly 200 blue eyes lined up along the edge of their mantle, box jellyfish have twenty-four, and conversely, copepods have just one right in the center of their forehead. Dragonflies and bees have three simple eyes next to their compound eyes.

In the end, bacteria, fungi, and plants don't even have the concept of eyes in the first place. In short, having eyes is a rare invention in the history of life, and "two is normal" is merely a depth perception bias that we humans, who happened to be born with two eyes, hold onto. However, for the sake of argument, let's ignore that and discuss it from a different angle.

Why do humans have two eyes? To be able to close one.
One eye recognizes the outside, the other stares inward.

How insufficient and incomplete it is to only look at the outward appearance.
Closing your eyes isn't about not seeing anything, it's about staring intently within.

People think we have two eyes to perceive the world more broadly and accurately. Our field of vision widens, we can judge distance, and we see things in three dimensions. And that's true. But that's only an outward-facing perspective. What Suguri wants to say is the opposite. Having two means you can let go of one. Even if you close one eye, the world doesn't collapse. And precisely because it doesn't collapse, you can turn the other eye inward.

The eye that looks outward and the eye that looks inward. These two should actually be equal.

Yet today, we pry our eyes open and try to stuff them with things from the outside. Screens, notifications, other people's faces, other people's opinions. The sheer volume of external information keeps growing, and our eyes, which should be looking inward, forget even how to open. Like the regressed eyes of a salamander, they remain closed, unused.

The act of closing one's eyes is thought to be a form of rest for the same reason. That's not true. Closing your eyes isn't about stopping, it's about changing direction. Only when you block out the external light does a scene arise within. There, a world as vast as the outside exists. Rather, it's a place where what was reflected from the outside world settles, so for me, it's closer to reality.

Naturally, due to the structure of the brain, it's not designed to simultaneously perceive and process information from both the inside and outside while one eye is closed. That's precisely why this becomes a matter of will, not talent or chance. The time to look inward will never come if left to its own devices. The outside world is constantly vying for our attention, so we have no choice but to carve out time for ourselves. I want to reaffirm that closing one's eyes is an active, intentional act.

And for every moment spent staring outside, a moment of looking inward is lost.

Time does not multiply. Even with two eyes, you only have time for one focus. If you pour all of it outward, your inner self will remain at zero for the rest of your life. Conversely, only those who occasionally develop the habit of closing one eye inward can barely grasp what they are seeing, what they are feeling, and where they are heading.

How to close your eyes.
Not to avoid seeing something, but to truly see it.

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