This is one of those days when I end up writing something different than I planned to. It's going to be kind of "an ode to my eyes."
So, I'm quite nearsighted. It started when I was five, in first grade. The teacher had placed me in the back of the room and I couldn't read the blackboard. When I still couldn't read it from the front row, she contacted my parents. I saw an eye doctor and started wearing glasses. By about eight or nine, I wore them all the time, and when I was a teenager, it was scary because my eyes worsened so quickly that I needed new glasses every six months or so. I was sure I would be blind by 20, but things levelled off when I reached college. My eyesight was 20/800, which was apparently my being able to see at twenty feet what a 20/20 person would see at 800 feet. That is, not much. In those days, I think glasses were still literally made of glass, and mine were thick and ugly, since only the most unattractive frames were thick enough to fit my prescription.
However, my vision was corrected to a sufficient degree to allow a lifetime of wonders...three advanced degrees, ten years working at a newsmagazine, living and travelling to the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe. I have visually taken in everything from Georgia O'Keefe's beloved northern New Mexico mountains to Herbert Howells's stone at Westminster Abbey, Lake Superior to the Scottish highlands. I have sight read complex choral and organ music. I have painted in oils, mixed colors, and taught color theory. I have driven automobiles for over 45 years without accident. Just navigating the first hour of any day of the year (walking around a house, making breakfast, reading emails, watching the news) would be impossible without my glasses.
From time to time, I think of what my life would have been like prior to twentieth century glasses. The fact is, I probably would have been literally "discarded" by my parents, whether they were poor or rich. If I had been poor, I would not have been able to safely do almost any moving around, much less manual labor, indoors or outdoors. While I certainly could have borne children, I could not have raised them, unable to see in any detail what they were doing or where they were. I couldn't have cooked over fires or sewn or picked herbs. If I had been born in the upper crust, I would not have been considered good social and dynastic material, being unable to see people's faces enough to function socially. I would not have been able to supervise the running of my household, walk unaided around my house, arrange social events, or be any kind of real world asset to my husband. Not surprisingly, the only milieu that I think I might have thrived in is a convent, seeing as I memorize music so easily. Gregorian chant would have been a cinch, as would prayers and Bible readings once I heard them a few times. A religious community might also have had the patience to find out what I was good at (and assign a scribe to write out all my deep thoughts!) So it would have been the nunnery if I had been lucky, being thrown off a cliff if I wasn't.
Seven or eight years ago, a number of important things happened. I went through menopause. I went through bankruptcy. I remembered that I loved English church music. And my eyesight started to improve. My current eyeglasses, bought five years ago, were an even weaker prescription. However, about three years ago, I realized that something was going on again with my eyesight, and the combination of my old fears of going blind, unbelievably low income, and using what little income I had to take trips to England, prevented me from going for an eye exam and getting new glasses. By last week, the lenses on this pair were so scratched and buffed, I couldn't see much of anything at all and I knew I could put it off no longer. Yesterday, the eye doctor told me that my baseline eyesight has improved significantly -- my problems seeing small print and distant signs is due to a prescription that is now far too strong! After he patiently recommended yearly eye exams, I chose new (light, attractive) frames and cannot wait to see properly again.
I agree with Louise Hay's and Esther Hicks's perspectives on health issues, that all of them stem from a spiritual source (and like Hay, I think there is usually a symbolic link -- heart problems to love, back problems to things you cannot bear, etc.) So I find it not only interesting, but validating, to consider that at a point in my life when I just could not stand to look at things that were hard, unfair and inexplicable, my eyesight worsened. Now, after a seven-year process of facing the past, feeling the old feelings, and making up a little for lost time in the area of church music, my eyesight has significantly improved! No eye exercises, vitamins or special foods, just becoming more whole. I'm not really surprised, yet it still stuns me that one's physical body can improve in any way at my age.
Like most people, I have often taken my eyesight for granted or have lamented its imperfections. But I'm not sure I can ever be so cavalier again. My eyes are a marvel and a miracle, and the loving, creative divine force that made them is awesome. And here's a shout-out, too, to all the scientists, doctors and technicians who make modern eyeglasses possible. Even with my improved vision, I'd be unable to function without you.
