No really, it’s bad. Holding-stuff-in-front-of-your-face-to-read-it bad. I have severe myopia (nearsightedness), a fact I cheerfully ignore. Because for most of my life, I’ve worn glasses.
While genetics do play a role, myopia cases have skyrocketed over the last century as a result of modern lifestyles. Your eyes are malleable, and meant to focus both near and far. With an excess of strain on the eyes – e.g., focusing too much on near objects – your eyes become stuck, losing their ability to focus at a distance. Too much reading or screen time, not enough sleep, working in poor light: all of these are detrimental to visual health.
You know the cliché about smart kids wearing glasses? Yeah. There’s a reason for that: they’re always reading. The idea has become ingrained in popular culture. Glasses are considered a sign of intelligence.
But glasses do not fix your poor eyesight. They ameliorate it. The lens is a filter applied to help your eyes do what they should be able to do naturally. Hence the term ‘corrective lenses’. They correct the problem. They don’t cure it.
Many people maintain that myopia can be cured. Through a regimen of eye exercises, vitamin supplements and reducing near-point stress, your nearsightedness can be reversed. The eye can be restored to its natural state. There are a number of success stories on the internet – with the caveat that you should wear your glasses as little as possible. It makes sense. You’d never heal an atrophied leg by relying on a crutch.
It’s just not always practical.
I dabbled in the exercises as a teen. Heck, I should still do them today. But the evidence for better vision is anecdotal. Although I’m always reading and staring at screens, for me, at least in part, it probably is genetic. Both my parents wear glasses. My mother’s eyesight is as bad as mine. And, well, I can’t be walking around bumping into walls. I need to see.
It’s not progressing, either. Myopia usually stabilizes around one’s teens or early twenties, which is what happened for me. It’s been the better part of a decade since I needed stronger lenses. While they can be inconvenient at times, I don’t have a problem wearing glasses.
Maybe someday I’ll try contacts.
Anyway. Today I’ve got a story to tell, about how we see the world.
I just bought a new pair of glasses. They cost an arm and a leg, but my last pair was from 2015. One hinge had snapped recently, and rust was starting to form. They’d served me well. It was time for a change. In particular, the old lenses were scratched and yellowed. Not that big a deal, I thought. The view was a little blurry, perhaps. I was more worried about the frame falling apart.
When I first put on my new pair, though, I was stunned. Everything was so clear. Colors were brighter, sharper. It was a whole new window on the world.
The old pair was scratched and faded, but I wore them every day. My mind had adjusted itself to the blurriness. It seemed normal. Now if I wear them, it’s like looking through a yellow fog.
That’s a good analogy for our beliefs and prejudices, don’t you think? We live in certain conditions and think it’s normal. Only with hindsight and perspective can we look back and realize that the way we saw things was in fact skewed, shaped by the environment we were living in at the time.
Life is a succession of changes. Births, deaths, love and loss, new careers, different countries. Our environment is constantly growing, evolving. Sometimes the old ways of thinking no longer apply.
And sometimes we choose to change, by actively seeking out new experiences. Taking responsibility for yourself is frightening, but also liberating. We can’t help how we see the world, but we can choose what to do with what we’re seeing.
We can choose a different view. One that embodies who we are today, not who we used to be.
And hopefully, the world will become just a little bit clearer.
