vision
I've been a huge fan of corrective lenses ever since a memorable moment in the second grade when I donned my first pair of glasses and promptly horrified my mother by proclaiming how impressed I was that I could see the (gigantic, neon) 7-Up sign that used to hang prominently on the side of a building in the Hollywood District of NE Portland. While I'm not legally blind without them, it's safe to say I would not have been able to live a "normal" life before the invention of eyeglasses. Of course, coming from the gene pool I do, neither would several generations before me, which means it's highly unlikely I'd be here at all. Anyway, glasses (and contacts) = a very big deal for me.
I experienced an interesting burst of insight, however, this past Wednesday as I sat in my eye doctor's examination room, contacts out, waiting for those icky dilation drops to do their work. I was really hoping my prescription had changed, as I felt it was probably not ideal that I could barely see the clock from across the room and that the text on the overhead screens at church kept bouncing around in an uncomfortable fashion. Turns out I was right, so there I sat, waiting as the doctor carefully tapped his way through the new online medical charts he and the office manager are just getting used to.
Normally, I am one of those people who is hyperaware of almost everything going on around her. I am an observer, able to tell you quite a bit about any environment in which I find myself and easily distracted by information making its way in from my perceptive periphery. This makes it hard to focus sometimes, but it also makes me good at, for example, my job as a teacher (I was once accused of having "bat-like hearing," which I took as quite a compliment). Were I not overwhelmingly averse to danger and uncertainty I'd probably make a great detective.
As I sat there in the doctor's office, however, I realized that once my glasses or contacts are removed, I my behavior dramatically changes. Because I'm no longer able to perceive or react to outside stimuli beyond light/dark/super-fuzzy outlines and basic movement, I retreat into myself. I become an internal observer, if you will, absorbed primarily by whatever is going on inside my head. I am sure this quality would change were I to perceive uncertainty or danger, but from the safety of the examination chair I was free to contemplate without the burden of reacting to the outside world. Having overheard the lady in the waiting room state she used the "Fred Meyer" pharmacy, I found myself engaged in prolonged reflection upon how the proper names of store proprietors become identified with their stores, and then become ubiquitous, divorced from their initial context. I mean, how often do we realize there actually was a guy named "Fred Meyer" when we say we're running to pick up a few groceries at Freddy's?
Not exactly a deep and philosophical line of thinking on my part, I'll grant you. The point is, though, that I was free to ponder as long as I wanted without worrying about the distracting observations vision brings. Which brings me (finally) to my interesting burst of insight: I bet many of history's great philosophers and theologians have been near-sighted. Or deaf, perhaps, if the operative factor is elimination of one of our usual key sources of outside input. Someone has probably done research on this, but it makes good sense to me that sometimes it takes elimination of outside distractions to give us the single-minded focus needed to discover or discern important things. This principle underlies our contemporary concerns about the attention spans of young people (and often older people, too) who attempt to "multi-task" before myriad electronic screens and other external stimuli.
Perhaps, then, the very condition that can cause me and so many others such problems in the absence of corrective lens technology is, under some circumstances, a gift. We can "turn off" the external stimuli that become so distracting and gain the freedom to think deeply. We lose the ability to experience the outside world, but we gain the ability to do the undistracted work of contemplation that can bring humanity so many benefits. We don't have good external vision, but perhaps that gives some of us greater internal vision -- if we choose to use it.
I'm still very thankful for corrective lenses. The ability to see the world around me is a tremendous gift. I wonder, though, whether it wouldn't be worthwhile to take off (or out) those lenses every now and then and use the unexpected gift God has given to those without perfect sight. We are "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14) -- every one of us. Even if we can't see that 7-Up sign.
I experienced an interesting burst of insight, however, this past Wednesday as I sat in my eye doctor's examination room, contacts out, waiting for those icky dilation drops to do their work. I was really hoping my prescription had changed, as I felt it was probably not ideal that I could barely see the clock from across the room and that the text on the overhead screens at church kept bouncing around in an uncomfortable fashion. Turns out I was right, so there I sat, waiting as the doctor carefully tapped his way through the new online medical charts he and the office manager are just getting used to.
Normally, I am one of those people who is hyperaware of almost everything going on around her. I am an observer, able to tell you quite a bit about any environment in which I find myself and easily distracted by information making its way in from my perceptive periphery. This makes it hard to focus sometimes, but it also makes me good at, for example, my job as a teacher (I was once accused of having "bat-like hearing," which I took as quite a compliment). Were I not overwhelmingly averse to danger and uncertainty I'd probably make a great detective.
As I sat there in the doctor's office, however, I realized that once my glasses or contacts are removed, I my behavior dramatically changes. Because I'm no longer able to perceive or react to outside stimuli beyond light/dark/super-fuzzy outlines and basic movement, I retreat into myself. I become an internal observer, if you will, absorbed primarily by whatever is going on inside my head. I am sure this quality would change were I to perceive uncertainty or danger, but from the safety of the examination chair I was free to contemplate without the burden of reacting to the outside world. Having overheard the lady in the waiting room state she used the "Fred Meyer" pharmacy, I found myself engaged in prolonged reflection upon how the proper names of store proprietors become identified with their stores, and then become ubiquitous, divorced from their initial context. I mean, how often do we realize there actually was a guy named "Fred Meyer" when we say we're running to pick up a few groceries at Freddy's?
Not exactly a deep and philosophical line of thinking on my part, I'll grant you. The point is, though, that I was free to ponder as long as I wanted without worrying about the distracting observations vision brings. Which brings me (finally) to my interesting burst of insight: I bet many of history's great philosophers and theologians have been near-sighted. Or deaf, perhaps, if the operative factor is elimination of one of our usual key sources of outside input. Someone has probably done research on this, but it makes good sense to me that sometimes it takes elimination of outside distractions to give us the single-minded focus needed to discover or discern important things. This principle underlies our contemporary concerns about the attention spans of young people (and often older people, too) who attempt to "multi-task" before myriad electronic screens and other external stimuli.
Perhaps, then, the very condition that can cause me and so many others such problems in the absence of corrective lens technology is, under some circumstances, a gift. We can "turn off" the external stimuli that become so distracting and gain the freedom to think deeply. We lose the ability to experience the outside world, but we gain the ability to do the undistracted work of contemplation that can bring humanity so many benefits. We don't have good external vision, but perhaps that gives some of us greater internal vision -- if we choose to use it.
I'm still very thankful for corrective lenses. The ability to see the world around me is a tremendous gift. I wonder, though, whether it wouldn't be worthwhile to take off (or out) those lenses every now and then and use the unexpected gift God has given to those without perfect sight. We are "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14) -- every one of us. Even if we can't see that 7-Up sign.
Hmm. I wonder if this explains why I always find myself thinking best in the shower. Pre-lasik it was one of the only times of the day when I had my glasses off, but even now with corrected vision, there's really no visual distraction in the shower other than plain white tile and a plain white shower curtain... and no auditory distraction beyond the sound of rushing water and the humming bathroom fan. Hmmm, a new excuse to stay even longer in the shower..... :)
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