The World Through My Eyes

This morning, I woke up with a terrible case of eye strain. In part, I know it's my fault, for spending entirely too much time surfing the net or playing NES games with friends. But it in part has to do with things beyond my control, such as the constant presence of fluorescent lighting, photocopied readings in print hardly big enough to read, and the fact that my eyesight is in general going downhill way too fast, and my prescription for my glasses is, only four months after the last eye exam, already incorrect.

I was not going to wear my glasses today. They cause me enough of a headache for not sitting on my face right, and for the glare from the annoying fluorescent lights. But I cannot wear my contacts when I've got eye strain. Iy simply hurts too much. So, taking a chance, I decided to just simply go without today, and went to class practically blind.

It was a rather interesting experience. I can see well enough up close, but with distances, all I see is a mass of color merging together, and my depth perception tends to go in and out. It was a risky thing to do, being in unfamiliar territory and unable to make out the faces of the people around me, unable to tell if the cars were far enough off to cross the street safely and whatnot. And I began to think: the world through my eyes is a scary place.

Boundaries blur and melt, nothing is clear, and things tend to not be what they appear. Granted, I've got the luck of all the walls of my college being painted different colors, so corners were easy to avoid. But I couldn't always recognize the person I was talking to, especially if I didn't know their voice all too well.

I did cave and don my glasses for the afternoon, which helped me to prove my self-proclaimed status as the Jenga master. But I've been thinking a lot about how different everything is when I can't see clearly. Not just the appearance of the people and things around me, but the way I behave and think in general. It's as if my whole world view is forced to shrink, until I only consider what's in my presence, simply because I have increased difficulty in discerning what's going on in my immediate vicinity. By giving up the ability to see clearly, I give up the luxury of concerning myself with things that have nothing to do with me in that moment. Only when I'm sitting alone in my room, trying not to squint at the keyboard, do I have time to think of other things.

I'm curious as to how prolonged exposure to the world without my eyesight being corrected by lenses of any kind will affect my view of the world, even if it's only a temporary shift. So I'm going to see how long I can make it without my glasses or contacts, and keep track of what's different in every aspect of my life. Granted, I will need them for readings with tiny print (such as tonight's reading) and for work, but other than that, I'm going to lay them aside. I think it'll be an interesting experience in truly seeing the world through my eyes.