Life Through Two Lenses
When I was eight, our teacher hung a yellowish piece of paper on the blackboard and said, “Copy this.” I was sitting at the end of the classroom and suddenly felt confused. I could only see a large, blank sheet. After a while, I remember raising my hand and asking shyly, “Mrs. Teacher, I can’t see anything there.” She must have been used to that because she immediately replied, “Try getting closer.” I took a couple of steps toward the center of the room, and Huey, Dewey, and Louie appeared on the yellow paper. That’s how I discovered I am myopic.
From then on, I wear prescription lenses about sixteen hours a day. I am nearsighted by about seven diopters in both eyes, so I just can’t live without vision correction. I know that there are many, many worse cases than mine without reaching blindness, but I think most people don’t understand how we myopics see the world.
![A black monitor with dark background and blurred writings on it]](/img/myopic1_dithered.webp)
And this is just at about 70–80 centimeters from my face. You can imagine how I see panoramas. I’m not the only one who tried to replicate the effect, but you can just add one or two layers of blur to a picture.
It’s like having a persistent Bokeh effect in front of you. It is especially weird with far source lights, which appear almost liquid in the dark. However, put that way, it sounds worse than it actually is. I am used to it, and to me my glasses are an organ, like as the liver or the lungs. They are just part of me.
The idea for this post came to me yesterday, thinking that I have experienced every important fact of my life through a couple of lenses. Other than the most intimate moments, I was always wearing glasses. Every conversation I had, every movie I watched, every word I read1… I had them on. Can you say the same about any other object?
Now, the question everybody asked in the last few years: Why don’t you get eye surgery? Because I don’t trust medicine enough: laser operations keep evolving (trust me, I followed the topic a lot), they are efficient, but there’s still the tendency to worsen after a few years, and I’m afraid that something won’t work. I know how delicate my eyes are, and I prefer keeping the glasses or the contact lenses.
So why this post? It is just a quick love letter to my glasses. It is a strange relationship that maybe only a few can comprehend, and I totally understand that. For many people they are an item; for me they are part of the daily routine without whom I wouldn’t be… serene, probably? They are a companion. It sounds a bit crazy, but here I am.
🎧 A bit obsessed with IV by Sagor Som Leder Mot Slutet
📖 I started Dawn by Octavia E. Butler. Not much happened in the first ~10%, but we’ll see
-
Yes, if you are nearsighted enough, you need glasses to read books too. ↩︎
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When I was eight, our teacher hung a yellowish piece of paper on the blackboard and said, “Copy this.” I was sitting at the end of the classroom and suddenly felt confused. I could only see a large, blank sheet. After a while, I remember raising my hand and asking shyly, “Mrs. Teacher, I can’t see anything there.” She must have been used to that because she immediately replied, “Try getting closer.” I took a couple of steps toward the center of the room, and Huey, Dewey, and Louie appeared on the yellow paper. That’s how I discovered I am myopic.
From then on, I wear prescription lenses about sixteen hours a day. I am nearsighted by about seven diopters in both eyes, so I just can’t live without vision correction. I know that there are many, many worse cases than mine without reaching blindness, but I think most people don’t understand how we myopics see the world.
And this is just at about 70–80 centimeters from my face. You can imagine how I see panoramas. I’m not the only one who tried to replicate the effect, but you can just add one or two layers of blur to a picture.
It’s like having a persistent Bokeh effect in front of you. It is especially weird with far source lights, which appear almost liquid in the dark. However, put that way, it sounds worse than it actually is. I am used to it, and to me my glasses are an organ, like as the liver or the lungs. They are just part of me.
The idea for this post came to me yesterday, thinking that I have experienced every important fact of my life through a couple of lenses. Other than the most intimate moments, I was always wearing glasses. Every conversation I had, every movie I watched, every word I read1… I had them on. Can you say the same about any other object?
Now, the question everybody asked in the last few years: Why don’t you get eye surgery? Because I don’t trust medicine enough: laser operations keep evolving (trust me, I followed the topic a lot), they are efficient, but there’s still the tendency to worsen after a few years, and I’m afraid that something won’t work. I know how delicate my eyes are, and I prefer keeping the glasses or the contact lenses.
So why this post? It is just a quick love letter to my glasses. It is a strange relationship that maybe only a few can comprehend, and I totally understand that. For many people they are an item; for me they are part of the daily routine without whom I wouldn’t be… serene, probably? They are a companion. It sounds a bit crazy, but here I am.
🎧 A bit obsessed with IV by Sagor Som Leder Mot Slutet
📖 I started Dawn by Octavia E. Butler. Not much happened in the first ~10%, but we’ll see
-
Yes, if you are nearsighted enough, you need glasses to read books too. ↩︎