"They" say that memory is the first thing to go. (Seriously. Who are they, anyway?) Well, apparently "they" have forgotten, because the first thing to go is not the memory, its the eyes. You can always tell the people of A Certain Age (and trust me, it's a LOT younger than you think it will be.) They are the ones holding everything at fingertip length, squinting and turning their heads like a camera lens unsuccessfully trying to focus in on the target.
I would point out how pathetic this all is, except for one teensy little problem. I have now achieved That Age, and then some. Oh sure, you can stave off the inevitable temporarily, playing games with your contact mono-vision and pretending that you really didn't care about that road sign you didn't really see as you passed it.
But at some point, you will care. I personally know someone who didn't recognize their own kid because they couldn't quite get the face into focus. This is not a positive development for the parent/child relationship. Not to mention your own self-esteem when they take you in to the doctor to have you checked out for early onset Alzheimers.
Thus, out of complete and total desperation, one month ago, I abandoned my contacts altogether in favor of being able to actually focus. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the fact that I wore glasses in public tells you just how desperate I was. It was tragic, as I dragged myself from the house those first few times, wearing the badge of visual desperation high on my aging and not so perky nose.
I must say, adults are much nicer about their brethren in need of visual assistance than they were as children. There were no cat calls, no mocking my impaired visual status. In fact, the biggest annoyance I endured was the fact that I had to remove my glasses to see anything up close, but then put them back on again to see anything further away than the end of my arms. (No, the irony did not escape me.) In point of fact, I eventually realized that I went so far as to swap problems in an effort to avoid the inevitable reality of reading glasses permanently planted on top of my head like some kind of weird hair bow.
Today, I decided it was going to be a new day. Instead of fighting my eyes and working on that mono-vision, which in ten years has NOT worked, I just overruled the eye doctor, and used contacts that would allow me to see everything far away in crystal clear vision. Today I, dare I admit it, reluctantly donned... oh the horror... Reading Glasses.
It was a whole new world out there. And I could see all of it. It was like the awakening of a spring flower, peeking through the haze of the soil and suddenly coming into the sunlight.
I could see again, and it was amazing to behold. I discovered that with reading glasses, I am wearing the glasses less, and I can see more. It is not perfect, but it is enough for today.
This little episode provides me an interesting metaphor for everything I fear in life. Too often, the dread of something turns out to be far worse than the actual happening in the moment. Very few moments in life live down to the worst of our imaginings. (I would except the first time your kid gets behind the wheel and starts to drive down the actual street. Let's not even go there.)
I think Shakespeare got it right when he wrote in Julius Caesar, "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once."
I sweat the small the stuff. I am not a model of patience when I have something to worry about. And trust me, there is always something for me to worry about. If there isn't, then I worry about what will go wrong next that I will have to worry about. It's a vicious cycle, like a rat on an exercise wheel. Squeak, squeak, squeak.
But it seems I am not the only one worrying senselessly. I am acquainted with a few other worriers just like me, who spend a lot of their time in their own mental morgue, waiting for the body to put in its appearance. There are spas to relax, vacations to be taken to get away from the stress of everyday life, and therapists to counteract the inevitable breakdown instigated by the wear and tear life inflicts on every last nerve.
We have cell phones to remain in constant contact, and we have e-mail, IM, facebook and other social media allowing us to keep track of everyone we care about 24/7. And yet, it seems we are more concerned today than our parents ever were when they weren't able to stalk everyone's every moment.
We have more assurance than in the history of the world that our safety is paramount. We have better medical care, safer food, vaccines, and a more or less civil society which exposes us to less danger than ever before. So why do we have more people on mood altering drugs at the same time?
Point being, reading glasses really aren't as bad as I thought. I was expecting constant annoyance as I went through the on/off/on/off dance of daily distraction. Turns out, it's not actually like that at all. Although I wore them to work, I don't need them to see everything like I do regular glasses. I am experiencing visual ecstasy as I am able, for the first time in several months, to really see my computer screen while playing a mean game of spider solitaire. (Obviously NOT while at work. Wow. That was close.)
I wonder how many other things in life I've avoided because I thought it would be harder or more complicated or somehow worse than it actually was? Certainly makes me think.
Years ago, I laughed at my poor mother, trying to thread a needle and asking for help. I think she will snicker quietly inside as I finally don the dreaded reading glasses for myself, and realize that age is only a number. It's how you feel about it that really matters!
Hello dollar store. Time to stock up!
