As of two days ago I no longer need corrective lenses, both eyes having undergone cataract surgery within the last week and a half. The one eye is corrected for reading, the other for distance, and between them I just open my eyes and see what I need to see. Over the course of some 43 years I've gone from glasses to contacts to contacts with reading glasses to glasses with progressive lenses to – this!
But last night, toward evening, I had this irrepressible urge to "take my contacts out" (I knew there were no glasses perched on my nose). It was as if I was somehow saying, "OK, enough with the clear vision. Back to the nighttime blur routine." My hands actually felt drawn to my eyes, and I have to wonder whether in some lapse of memory or wit I might not have actually tried tugging at the corner of my eye again and again, hoping to pop out the phantom contact lens.
I used to speculate about the people in the miracle stories in the Gospels, how it was for them post-healing, whether they ever "wanted their money back," so to speak. Plato, of course, went to lengths to describe how those who were accustomed to the "Cave" neither wanted to leave to begin with, nor were particularly interested in staying out in the light of day once they had been dragged there, either.
Seems there is always something comfortable about business as usual and something uncomfortable about change, even if it's an improvement, and particularly if it's permanent. How many habits and addictions did I hold on to, just because I didn't want to be without them ever again? How enamored have I been of one kind of rut or another, just because it was well-worn and part of who I thought "I" was? How funny is it that, even now, I would find myself drawn to blurred vision, just because it was my blurred vision?
How I love this goofy, always unsatisfactory, life!
But last night, toward evening, I had this irrepressible urge to "take my contacts out" (I knew there were no glasses perched on my nose). It was as if I was somehow saying, "OK, enough with the clear vision. Back to the nighttime blur routine." My hands actually felt drawn to my eyes, and I have to wonder whether in some lapse of memory or wit I might not have actually tried tugging at the corner of my eye again and again, hoping to pop out the phantom contact lens.
I used to speculate about the people in the miracle stories in the Gospels, how it was for them post-healing, whether they ever "wanted their money back," so to speak. Plato, of course, went to lengths to describe how those who were accustomed to the "Cave" neither wanted to leave to begin with, nor were particularly interested in staying out in the light of day once they had been dragged there, either.
Seems there is always something comfortable about business as usual and something uncomfortable about change, even if it's an improvement, and particularly if it's permanent. How many habits and addictions did I hold on to, just because I didn't want to be without them ever again? How enamored have I been of one kind of rut or another, just because it was well-worn and part of who I thought "I" was? How funny is it that, even now, I would find myself drawn to blurred vision, just because it was my blurred vision?
How I love this goofy, always unsatisfactory, life!
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