I wear three different pairs of prescription lenses. No, not all at once, though before I went to prescription lenses, I did put sunglasses over reading glasses when I read at the beach. Yeah! Goofy. But when lying on a chaise lounge on a distant island, who cares? Beside, I saw some people from other countries who wore some strange stuff on the beach—and some who wore very little stuff. Two pairs of glasses? Not a biggie.
I do have three different sets of prescription glasses. The first is a set of bifocals, pretty much my everyday, everywhere glasses. With them I can see the road and the speedometer, the nav map, and the coins in the cupholder. And they, like my prescription sunglasses, are Transitions sensitive to variations in light intensity, photochromic. The third set has a focal length of thirty inches and has blue-blocker, not Transitions, lenses. I am wearing them now as I write this, my head—you guessed it—about thirty inches from my computer screen.
That I use three different sets of glasses is probably analogous to my seeing the world through three different perspectives, two of which are also “bifocal.” The first set of lenses, my goto everyday perspective is psychological/social; the second, philosophical/theological; the third, rational. I confess that I do sometimes simultaneously wear two sets, and when I do put a second set over the first set, I get a different perspective, sometimes a clearer view, but sometimes a more fuzzy one.
But before I say more, I should note that over the years, I have developed cataracts that the eye doctor says have to be removed before she’ll give me a new set of lenses. Yes, there’s a bit of blurriness regardless of the glasses I don. And interestingly, the development of cataracts coincided with the historical development of my psychological/social, philosophical/theological, and rational perspectives. In short, I don’t see the world as clearly as I think I see it.
Think about my learning that the very biological lenses through which I see the world have cataracts. The slight blurriness through which I viewed the world motivated me to schedule the long overdue appointment, which I had postponed because of COVID. Remember all those admonitions about “social distancing.” No one sits six feet away from the optometrist in that little room with the letters that don’t spell any words. “Tell me what you can read on the chart?” “Whoa, I could, if I knew the words.” Anyway, think of my sitting with my face behind that alien spaceman’s multi-lens contraption, trying to read letters that made no coherent message, bytes of info not strung together as they are in the words you now read. [If you want to cheat, by the way, the sixth line is “E D F C Z P” and the seventh is “F E L O P Z D”; I won’t reveal any of the other lines because, well, you need glasses, and you need to get over your vanity] Anyway, there I was, my face just inches away from the optometrists masked face. And imagine my hearing from a masked woman that I wasn’t seeing things clearly because of a faulty prescription as much as from an innate defect.
There was something wrong with me that no corrective lenses could correct. I had incorrigible eyes! Okay, not incorrigible. I need the cataract surgery, which the optometrist assured me, was an in-and-out ten-minute procedure. “Get it done, and then will talk about new glasses.”
So, I needed another person to tell me that I wasn’t seeing the world as it is. I thought my view was normal, the slight blur I noticed just an unimportant anomaly, but in looking through my own eyes I had a distorted perspective that developed so gradually that I ignored it.
Now, I have to admit that I did have an inkling that I had cataracts. My parents had them. And then there was that incident when a granddaughter said, “PapPap, why are your eyes wavy?” Out of the mouths of babes, as they say. But “they” also say, we don’t listen to those closest to us when they give advice; thus, the need for unrelated and objective mentors, counselors, and psychologists. When I think not of my physical lenses in my current prescriptions and my intangible lenses through which I understand the world, I realize that maybe both have cataracts. What if my psychological/social, philosophical/theological, and supposedly rational lenses are slightly blurry—or worse, very blurry? Would I be able to tell without help from the outside? And if someone did point out the reason for the blurriness could be taken care of through a simple operation, would I schedule the appointment to get those intangible cataracts removed? And if not, why would I postpone something that would help me see more clearly? Am I addicted to fuzziness?
And what about your own lenses, the intangible ones through which you see the world? What if someone close to you asked, “Why are your eyes so wavy?” Or said, “I don’t think you are seeing clearly.” Would you take steps to correct your flawed view that might need only a tiny bit of tweaking or removing a thin blurry layer? And if you discovered that a full cataract operation was the only solution, would you submit to removing the blur on the good chance that you might see the world clearly, that you might see as others see?
Going to the eye doctor can be an eye-opener.
I do have three different sets of prescription glasses. The first is a set of bifocals, pretty much my everyday, everywhere glasses. With them I can see the road and the speedometer, the nav map, and the coins in the cupholder. And they, like my prescription sunglasses, are Transitions sensitive to variations in light intensity, photochromic. The third set has a focal length of thirty inches and has blue-blocker, not Transitions, lenses. I am wearing them now as I write this, my head—you guessed it—about thirty inches from my computer screen.
That I use three different sets of glasses is probably analogous to my seeing the world through three different perspectives, two of which are also “bifocal.” The first set of lenses, my goto everyday perspective is psychological/social; the second, philosophical/theological; the third, rational. I confess that I do sometimes simultaneously wear two sets, and when I do put a second set over the first set, I get a different perspective, sometimes a clearer view, but sometimes a more fuzzy one.
But before I say more, I should note that over the years, I have developed cataracts that the eye doctor says have to be removed before she’ll give me a new set of lenses. Yes, there’s a bit of blurriness regardless of the glasses I don. And interestingly, the development of cataracts coincided with the historical development of my psychological/social, philosophical/theological, and rational perspectives. In short, I don’t see the world as clearly as I think I see it.
Think about my learning that the very biological lenses through which I see the world have cataracts. The slight blurriness through which I viewed the world motivated me to schedule the long overdue appointment, which I had postponed because of COVID. Remember all those admonitions about “social distancing.” No one sits six feet away from the optometrist in that little room with the letters that don’t spell any words. “Tell me what you can read on the chart?” “Whoa, I could, if I knew the words.” Anyway, think of my sitting with my face behind that alien spaceman’s multi-lens contraption, trying to read letters that made no coherent message, bytes of info not strung together as they are in the words you now read. [If you want to cheat, by the way, the sixth line is “E D F C Z P” and the seventh is “F E L O P Z D”; I won’t reveal any of the other lines because, well, you need glasses, and you need to get over your vanity] Anyway, there I was, my face just inches away from the optometrists masked face. And imagine my hearing from a masked woman that I wasn’t seeing things clearly because of a faulty prescription as much as from an innate defect.
There was something wrong with me that no corrective lenses could correct. I had incorrigible eyes! Okay, not incorrigible. I need the cataract surgery, which the optometrist assured me, was an in-and-out ten-minute procedure. “Get it done, and then will talk about new glasses.”
So, I needed another person to tell me that I wasn’t seeing the world as it is. I thought my view was normal, the slight blur I noticed just an unimportant anomaly, but in looking through my own eyes I had a distorted perspective that developed so gradually that I ignored it.
Now, I have to admit that I did have an inkling that I had cataracts. My parents had them. And then there was that incident when a granddaughter said, “PapPap, why are your eyes wavy?” Out of the mouths of babes, as they say. But “they” also say, we don’t listen to those closest to us when they give advice; thus, the need for unrelated and objective mentors, counselors, and psychologists. When I think not of my physical lenses in my current prescriptions and my intangible lenses through which I understand the world, I realize that maybe both have cataracts. What if my psychological/social, philosophical/theological, and supposedly rational lenses are slightly blurry—or worse, very blurry? Would I be able to tell without help from the outside? And if someone did point out the reason for the blurriness could be taken care of through a simple operation, would I schedule the appointment to get those intangible cataracts removed? And if not, why would I postpone something that would help me see more clearly? Am I addicted to fuzziness?
And what about your own lenses, the intangible ones through which you see the world? What if someone close to you asked, “Why are your eyes so wavy?” Or said, “I don’t think you are seeing clearly.” Would you take steps to correct your flawed view that might need only a tiny bit of tweaking or removing a thin blurry layer? And if you discovered that a full cataract operation was the only solution, would you submit to removing the blur on the good chance that you might see the world clearly, that you might see as others see?
Going to the eye doctor can be an eye-opener.
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