Clarity

"But this morning, there's a calm I can't explain

The rock candy's melted, only diamonds now remain"
- John Mayer, Clarity

After years of deluding myself to believing I have 20/20 vision, I finally had a proper eye checkup. It wasn't my first time to see an eye doctor, nor was it my first time to get prescription glasses. At age 15, I was diagnosed with low level astigmatism and then nearsightedness at age 23. In both cases, I wore my glasses inconsistently for about a year. They weren't very comfortable, which I don't know up to this point, was whether due to poor choice of frames, a miscalculation of the lens or maybe my eyes just weren't that stable yet.

What added to my confusion was that every other eye exam I had in between (mostly part of the annual physical exams sponsored by my health card) told me my eyes were great. For my part, I could read fine and I never experienced any vision-related headaches. With that in mind, I got yet another pair of glasses at age 25, this time with a blank lens. These I used for cosmetics more than anything else, like when I woke up some mornings with one eye smaller than the other, or looking sleep-deprived, puffy or bloodshot. Or as some kind of mask if I wanted to look anonymous or even invisible in a crowd of strangers.

Three years later, though, I started to notice I was having difficulty reading Powerpoint presentations from afar. But maybe that was a fluke, some illusion from the lighting that causes the blur. One time I didn't recognize a person walking towards right away, I blamed it on the backlighting. Many more blurry powerpoint presentations later, I randomly tried on a colleague's glasses and seeing that the text on a nearby poster looked so much better, that was my wake up call that I needed them myself.

The visit at the opthalmologist's was already a revelation. I can read line number 8 with the right lens after all! With the white walls and the mental suggestion that you only focus on the eye chart, I did not notice anything else. So it was a shocker when I tried on my new glasses at the store and looked outside-- even the large letters looked clearer! I walked around some more after I left at the store. So this is how the world is supposed to look like. I thought I only had problems seeing fine print, but everything looked better.

I had been going through my life then these past few years not seeing the best in things, literally. I recognized words and letters not because I could read them clearly but because of the context they were in. The doctor said that even if I could read fine without the glasses, it takes much more effort to do so which may result in headaches or wrinkles. This makes me wonder if there are other things in life I am not seeing clearly and am still in denial about. Maybe there are still some things I could do better in if I only recognized and took a step towards it. What exactly, I'm not sure. In that respect, I may still be quite myopic.

PBA09106549r