The Importance of Perception

There is an external world and there are objects that impress themselves upon our minds. And even though there's no real agency involved here, I open my eyes, there's a microphone in front of me. What reasons do we have to believe that this is happening when, you know, we perceive the world around us? All sorts of reasons. It just seems to happen to us. We don't actively bring it about like we do and we close our eyes and imagine seeing something in our mind's eye. So why should perception work this way?