Depth of Vision

6 minute read

I am wearing new glasses. As I type, I can see the edges of the frames - I’m not used to them yet. They are reading glasses, with a blue light blocker. Since I got them, it amazes me how clear emails and text messages have become, that I can see them with a clarity that until now I hadn’t realised I had lost.

Having good eyesight is something that has always been a source of pride in my family. When it comes to physical prowess, we’re on the back foot so I get why 20:20 vision rose to the top for bragging rights. I remember my granny often proudly pointing out that she was the only one of her peers who didn’t rely on glasses - a claim I couldn’t quite reconcile with the red magnifying glass she kept hidden in her handbag to check the prices in Quinnsworth.

My parents too, were proud of the fact that they were in their 50s before reading glasses were required and as more and more friends of mine in their 20s or 30s succumbed, I was happy not to have to deal with the whole messy business of contact lenses or pay a fortune for frames. I liked being the friend who could always read the far-away sign, the number on the bus jostling through traffic, even the side effects of medication printed in teeny tiny writing on a background designed not to be able to be read at all. The clarity of my vision was my superpower and like my foremothers and fathers, it gave me a bump of pride.

Losing that clarity happened by stealth. It started with small infringements - the need to always brighten my phone and laptop screens, having to change the settings in Outlook (when had Microsoft started to make the default setting so small?), the way I had to squint to read the neon time display on the cable box under the television. I’ve known and not known for ages that I needed to do something but it was only when out for dinner recently with a friend who made fun of me for holding the menu at arm’s length to read it (something, I admit, I have been known to make fun of her for) that I decided to bite the bullet.

For me, biting the bullet meant a trip to the optometrist and a follow-up to Warby Parker where I tried on clear frames and coloured frames and wireframes and round frames, sold by young hipsters all wearing variations of these frames themselves. I paid more for the privilege - I know I could have picked up a pair in the chemist for half the price - but these glasses were going to be on my face for a good part of each day, after all. It seemed important that I give the decision as least half the time I would give to picking out a new pair of runners.

Now that I have my glasses - rectangular ones, with see-through plastic frames - it’s been making me think about the clarity of my vision in other areas too.

I’ve been thinking about that 20 something me - the one who could see without any blurriness at all - and how clearly she saw everything, or thought she did. I don’t know if this is true for you, but at that age, myself and my friends were always so certain about things, so “def-in-ite” as David Gray puts it in his song My Oh My. We were especially certain about our opinions of other people, about their relationships, about what course of action they should take, what decision we would make if we were in their shoes. Looking back, I wonder where our relationship knowledge even came from, given that we grew up at a time and in a culture when the term “healthy relationship” probably meant that both people in the couple saw the same GP. What went into creating a successful relationship - or indeed, problems within relationships - were things that weren’t talked about any more than feelings, or our bodies, or - God forbid - sex.

Given all of that, I think our opinions - our learnings - had to come from films, books, music, TV and we drew the best conclusions we could, given the data available. In my early 30s, talking to a friend who had just found out her husband was having an extramarital affair, she blurted out through her tears that the whole thing sounded like something out of EastEnders. And she was right, in a way, because we’d never heard people like us go through something like that - work through something like that - so EastEnders really was our only reference point. For both of us and our broader group of friends, problems - especially issues within relationships, within families - were usually raised under the protection of a few drinks. And, of course, the great thing about airing out problems when we were drunk was that everyone could forget them - or make out like they forgot them - the next day. There was no pressure for follow-up conversation, there was no pressure to actually do anything.

I’ve written here before that my 40s are my favourite decade so far and the reason is mostly that it’s been my most honest decade. Of course, coming out was a huge part of that for me, but beyond that, I see it in other peoples’ lives as well.

By the time most of us reach 40, we’ve gotten some of that black and white thinking knocked out of us, we’re starting to see the grey.

Whether it’s a relationship breakdown, a bereavement, an illness, an addiction (our own, or someone else’s) or a myriad of other things, most of us have dealt with something pretty big, pretty shattering, by the time we’ve reached 40 - it’s hard to get there unscathed. And on that journey, we’ve probably had to reach out for help, to talk about things, to take on different perspectives, to see things differently. We’ve learned that relationships - romantic or otherwise - aren’t like the movies, that there are lessons that come from disappointment and that much of our happiness in life doesn’t come from what we are looking at; it comes from what we choose to focus on, what we choose to see.

I imagine my 20 something-year-old self would look at getting glasses as a step towards old age, as the first of many things that will start to go. And she’s right, I suppose, in a clinical kind of way.

But my 47-year-old self sees this differently. My new glasses are simply a tool to help me see more clearly - one of many tools in my toolbox alongside others like yoga, meditation, mindfulness, exercise, nutrition, even therapy. If I remember to use these tools - albeit imperfectly - I foster a willingness, an open-mindedness, a sense of balance that I didn’t realise was missing before.

Rather than seek clarity through definite answers, today I am more interested in seeking empathy, understanding, connection, and this has resulted in a shift in my gaze, a softening if you like. I wonder if my twenty-something-year-old self would understand this - if she’d be surprised. I think she’d certainly be surprised and very pleased to know that I feel further from old age; less worried about getting older today than I’ve ever felt. That, just like the glasses, the life in between her viewpoint and mine has given me a different type of clarity, a depth of vision that I didn’t have back then. A depth of vision that I had to be standing here - right here - to see.

Depth of Vision

6 minute read

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