Life Lessons as taught by a pair of Glasses
Image from Pixabay
I have had a pair of glasses for quite some time now. I remember when I got glasses back when I was ten years of age, and they have stuck around with me ever since. I used to wear them constantly only to take them off whenever I was sleeping, or while engaging in sports to avoid breaking them. But recently, I lost my glasses in a minor mishap which I will get to shortly. When it happened, I didn't feel all that weird. But after some time living life without them, I began thinking and introspecting, and lo and behold. I have received a few lessons about life from none other than my inanimate pair of spectacles. To think that such a simple event could teach me a few things so profound is rather baffling when you come to think of it. But here we are. Life exists in the simplest of things.
Living in a Blurry world
What the world used to look like before. Image from Pixabay
I was born with a genetic disorder which runs in the family which caused my eyes to keep squeezing down onto itself. It isn't anything serious and is quite common in quite a few people. This disease is called Hereditary Myopia. It is basically short-sightedness which is inherited from your parents and is no fault of your own. Don't go and blame your parents now, if you suffer from the same. My eyesight was perfectly normal as a child as far as I could tell. It only started deteriorating when I grew to around Seven years of age and continued to grow worse and worse until the age of Sixteen.
As a result, my education suffered as my grades kept dropping lower and lower. I used to think that the reason studious children sit at the front desk is that that way they can see what's actually written on the board. But, alas I didn't know any better. My parents started to think that I was growing dumber and increasingly unfocused with age and passage of time, and considered using other measures to cure it before ultimately dropping all of those plans. It wasn't until I was around 10 years of age that my parents noticed that I used to watch television while standing close to the screen despite the availability of an abundance of seats. They then began suspecting that I might have some trouble with my eyesight. So they took me an optometrist.
Image on Pixabay
Et voila! I now had a brand new pair of glasses and the world started appearing in Ultra High Definition like I had never experienced before. Things became so much clearer. I could finally see without squinting! But, why couldn't I ever know that I had some problems with my eyesight? You see, I never knew that my vision was bad because I never had any idea of what the world was actually supposed to look like! And that led me to my first two important lessons of life:
You don't know what you don't know.
It may sound stupidly simple, but it is a truth. Unless you have an idea of something, all you can do is fantasise and imagine without ever knowing what the truth is. And this carries over to so many aspects of a person's life. I am pretty sure that people have been grateful for the experience they've gained after they've been through a certain situation. Without that bit of experimentation and the resulting experience gained, we have no way of knowing any better. That is where taking calculated risks is necessary for growth.
There is no true knowledge without contrast.
You can gain all the knowledge about something once you read or hear about it, or even see it. But like I never knew what the world was supposed to look like, you wouldn't really know something unless you had something to compare or, better yet, contrast it to. I only discovered that the Human eye is capable of Ultra high definition once I had my vision corrected to contrast the blurry phases of my life. Similarly, you wouldn't know love you'd know hate. You wouldn't know strength unless you knew weakness, and you wouldn't know success or victory unless you knew struggle.
Clarity in a World Reborn
Clarity through the lens. Image on Pixabay
As soon as I got my glasses, my grades started improving, and I could find myself feeling more and more healthy. My parents saw this as well and were relieved in the newfound reassurance that their kid wasn't getting any dumber of unfocused as he was growing older.
In fact, one of the things which took a major turn for me was the fact that I was now able to clearly focus on things. Apart from the lack of a blur, and the formation of crystal clear shapes, I could finally see things for they are and that enabled me to focus on the things that I wanted to, and remove all the unnecessary elements out of the way. Earlier, since I always saw things as blurry objects, I had a hard time differentiating between things, and more often than not, ended up confused. Now that I finally had a pair of perfectly corrected eyes, I could easily focus more on what was necessary. And that taught me my second lesson.
You need to filter life to get what you want.
Life will throw a ton of shit at you. They'll have varying levels of intensities. Some will slowly kill you from the inside, while others will take you for a roller coaster ride. Some will seduce you into comfort, and the others will distract you from your objective. Hence, once you've figured out, what you want to do with life, it is imperative to recognise how to do it. And then, relentlessly proceed with the pursuit of your desires until the time that you've accomplished the same. You must filter out whatever seeks to keep you away from your goal and stay focused and on track. There shall always be time to rest and enjoy the distractions once the goal is accomplished. But first, filtering out all the non-essentials and keeping focus is what's imperative.
The Things we take for Granted
The things we take for granted. Image from Pixabay
Things were going pretty smoothly for me among all the ups and downs which life has to offer. I was using my glasses regularly for all purposes apart from sleep and sports. I used to get up each morning, fish for my glasses and then continue to wear them throughout the day. Never once, did I imagine what would happen if I ever lost them. I must remark that I am rather meticulous that way. That is, until one fine day with my friends.
I got up as I usually would, put on my glasses, and went ahead for a bath in a river with my friends. After some time spent enjoying there, I decide that I want to practice floating techniques in the water. And so after a few attempts, I am successfully able to float on my belly like a dead body being washed on the shores of a river. When I finally look up, I notice something immensely different. I realise that the world is back to being blurry again. My spectacles got washed away by the current of the river we were bathing in! Moreover, I was so used to having my glasses on, that I completely forgot that I was even wearing them when I took a dip in the water! I had taken my glasses for granted.
They say that some lessons can only be taught by leaving. My pair of glasses sure did teach me their lesson when they left my eyes alone in the blurry world. It was alright then. But slowly it turned into a really irritating ordeal. Then, that thought occurred to me. If losing my glasses could be that irritating, what would losing my sight be like? It would be agonising! I came to realise all of the things that I've taken for granted in my life, and never really been all too grateful for. It taught me the most recent lesson in my life by leaving my side.
Be grateful for what you have.
Now, this one is the one thing that always taught to us from a very young age. That we should be grateful for what we have. Yet, we tend to forget this in such a manner that we tend to take for granted what we are lucky to have today. Nobody knows what can happen. You may lose your legs in a car crash. You may lose your spouse to a disease in a few days. You may lose all your money overnight due to a robbery or a fire. You may lose your own life in an instant. What will you have left to be grateful for then? The truth is, we are all very lucky to have what we have today. We should all cherish whatever we have, no matter what it is. There can always be better, just the same way that there can always be worse, but what you do have will never be the same again.
It's funny how something so small and inanimate such as a pair of spectacles could teach me some of the profound things about life. But here we are, taking life lessons from a pair of old glasses. Just goes to show that everything has value and that there is a lesson in everything provided you're willing to learn from it. After all, my spectacles have taught me quite a lot!