This is a true story from the British publishing industry, shared on a radio program.
A university press in the UK was preparing to publish a series of classic literature and wanted the books to be completely free of typos. To ensure perfection, they hired several proofreading experts. After the experts completed their work, the press displayed the printed pages in a hallway on campus for two weeks. They even announced a reward for anyone who could find a typo. Professors and students alike eagerly searched for mistakes, but none were found, so the books were printed as they were. However, after the books were published, a typo was embarrassingly discovered in the very first sentence on the first page.
This kind of mistake is said to be caused by a trick of the brain. It turns out that our brain doesn’t always see things as they are; it sees what it wants to see. When we’re already familiar with how a word is supposed to look, our brain can overlook obvious errors because it fills in the correct version automatically.
But imagine if the things we wanted to see were always good and kind. Then no matter what we looked at or who we encountered, we’d naturally view them in a positive light.