Friday, July 19, 2013

Lesson #17:

Lesson #17: Gain a New Perspective




Yesterday I got contacts. As I went through the various eye tests at the doctor’s office, it suddenly became shocking to me that I had even been getting around previously without them! The world was suddenly crispy and focused. Clarity...ahhhh! How refreshing.

That was before the breakdown. I didn’t realize taking my contacts out would turn into such an ordeal! After many unsuccessful attempts I told my eye doctor that I was afraid I was going to push my contact around to the backside of my eye ball and get it stuck there. To which she laughed and told me that it was impossible to do that.

Well...I kind of did. Sort of.

While attempting to remove the contact while at the office, I managed to roll it up into a little contacty taco and then slide it up on top of my eye ball back in the eye socket. It hurt really bad! So I inevitably began freaking out. The doctor had to get me some numbing drops and some colored liquid stuff and then, using her microscope, she went in to get that sucker. Crisis averted. Tears...not so much.

I tried again and again and again to put on then take off those freaking contacts. The taking off being the only part that was AWFUL for me (because of the whole irrational fear of it rolling back into my brain via my eye socket).

Finally I kind of caught on and I was invited to wear them home then come back in a week for a check up. So I’ve been putting them on and off (as instructed to do) and experimenting with how it makes me feel. In this discovery process, I’ve noticed that things were so hazy before. When I take my contacts off, things that are far away are just so blurry. Now, with this new, fresh, clear perspective...I almost don’t know what to think. It sounds weird, but, it kind of hurts to have this much clarity. My head is having a hard time adjusting itself to seeing so well.

I can relate to this feeling. Knowing things in all their essence, seeing the truth through the crispness and brightness of utter clarity...that stuff is intense. And sometimes painful.  But it’s important to not be content in the haziness. Life is about seeing clearly, and acting purely, and being in the light.

“Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.” - Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

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