In 2009, when I was in seventh grade, I started to realize that I couldn’t see the board. So, when I came home from school, I told my mother. She made an appointment for me to go see the eye doctor, to find out that I was myopic (nearsightedness, not being able to see things far away with perfect clarity). In a matter of weeks, I had my glasses. At the time, computer frames were really popular, so I got these tiny black and purple frames. I remind you, at this time, I thought purple and green looked great together, I was going through my awkward phase. A year later, I got contacts. After that, I didn’t wear my glasses as much. But, my father would bug me about how I shouldn’t wear my contacts so much and to give my eyes a break by wearing my glasses instead. I could see more from my contacts, but I could see clearer with my glasses.
When I entered high school, not many of my friends had glasses. My parents told me that my friends would probably start to get glasses soon or later in high school. So I waited. And only two of them did. By the very end of my senior year, people had told me that my glasses were dorky, and not in a good way. And I was also starting to really hate the fact that I could see so little out of the tiny frames. So, I finally decided to get new frames after six years. This time I got big round black frames, which I really like and so do a lot of other people.
As I am now in college, and still many of friends don’t need to wear glasses. I always thought of them to be lucky to not have to deal live contacts issues (especially when your eyes burn because it didn’t have the five hours it needed to clean), cleaning your glasses (because somehow it always manages to get dirty), breaking glasses (because sometimes I forget I put it on my bed and I just happen to sit on it or step on it), and overall blurry vision. It can be a huge hassle. But through all the cons, I have learned that there are some pros to wearing glasses.
I have always hated not being able to see everything clearly; I only don’t mind it early in the morning and late at night. But, over the years, I have learned that not seeing something in its perfect clarity, makes things just that more beautiful. When you look at lights in the dark or you look at a Christmas tree, you see how beautiful the lights are. Imagine it just a little out of focus. The lights look bigger and a lot softer. Everything that we see in the world with perfect or corrected vision is sharp and edgy. When it is taken out of focus, you can see the softness to it. I once read an article by James Runcie, writing about a man, who had perfect vision, and went to his eye doctor to get a pair of prescription glasses, so he could see the world differently: he felt that it was to sharp, for he wanted to look at things and see them with softer eyes.
As I am writing this article now, I am wearing my glasses, I notice how much more often that I wear my glasses and how sometimes it’s better for me to wear them instead of my contacts. Whenever I go on a job interview or I am going to do something professionally, I will wear my glasses. I often feel that people tend give me more respect, think of me more professionally, and think I am smarter. I also wear them when I am hanging out with my friends in my dorm, doing homework, or when I am just to tired and I know that my eyes will hurt if I wear my contacts. I see my myopia now as more of advantage. I feel that I am more like a camera; I can choose the things that I want to put in focus and other things that I want to be blurry. I can only have this by being nearsighted.
