Viewpoint is just a view from a single point. Given that caveat, I’m here to say that from where I stand, cataract surgery is weird.

Wonderful, yes, but weird.

To begin with, once you start telling friends your eyesight is cloudy and you are having cataract surgery, you find out that everyone has had, or is having, cataract surgery. Your next-door neighbor, your best friend, your brother-in-law, your lunchtime companion, your book-club acquaintance. I fully expect someone to tell me that their cat just had this procedure, somewhere between lives number 6 and 7. I’m worried that cataract surgery is just a precursor to hip replacement, another much-discussed procedure in what we third-stage folks call our “organ recitals.”

So yes, I just had a cataract removed in my right eye, the first in a two-step process of receiving new eyes. My doctor (who has done literally thousands of these procedures) and my wife (who went through it a year ago) told me everyone reacts differently and that, in fact, each eye is different. As of this writing—and it is guaranteed to change tomorrow—I have 20/20 vision in my right eye and I can barely read the big “E” on the eye chart out of my left.

My brain is confused.

So that actual “seeing” thing is weird at the moment. In the course of writing this post, I began without any glasses on, then I switched to my “regular” multifocal glasses seeking more clarity. Later I put on my multifocal reading/computer glasses in hopes of a better view, only to give up and take them off entirely.

And then there’s the procedure itself. Here’s my imperfect understanding of the way it works. First, while you are still awake, they use a laser to break the cataract into pieces. You never want to hear the words, “you will feel something pressing against your eye” if you can help it. Then the anesthesiologist gives you her cocktail of drugs (she refused to just go with a bourbon on the rocks) and while you are under they cut a slit (or something) in your eye to take out those pieces and install a new lens. You wake up and voilà—you can see things you couldn’t see before until your brain kicks into gear and tries to adjust to seeing through new eyes.

But this isn’t the weirdest part. That comes when your self-image gets all screwed up along with your eyesight.

You see, I’ve always worn glasses. Always.

Yes, there was a time in life when I didn’t wear glasses, but I was this big:

Apparently, I kept running into things because somewhere along the way my parents figured out that I needed glasses.

I was in the third grade when my mom and dad bought me glasses. The story is that they were appalled at how long they had waited because I was exclaiming over being able to see things like tree limbs for the first time. But they also knew I was an active little guy who would have quickly lost a pair of expensive glasses if they weren’t fastened to my face (figuratively), so they bought an extra-dorky pair (that’s a technical term) that curved around the ear to ensure they stayed on my face.

My self-image immediately changed. I went from being a hellraising, fun-loving, active kid to a dork whose friends called him four-eyes. (Kids can be very mean.) I still played every sport imaginable, but I had to be careful not to break my glasses. And when I took them off to play football I couldn’t see past my nose, so the coach stuck me in as a lineman. I stopped playing football soon afterwards.

I once went to the doctor to see about getting contacts, but my eyeballs apparently weren’t made for contacts. Which was fine by me, since that whole “touching your eyes” thing is a problem I’ve had my entire life.

I’ll spare you the tedium (and me the embarrassment) of posting my various class pictures through high school. Suffice it to say, my glasses did not become any more fashionable. My parents were all-in on the dorky look. Maybe they got a discount. It was probably because my father was an engineer, where dorky equals cool. Who knows.

When I was able to assert more control over my glasses I tried to go with something that was fashionable for the era, as seen in the family photo from 1974, where Steve and I—in our wire rims—look as if we’ve just taken a break from a country-rock band.

Again, glasses were very much a part of my self-image throughout adulthood. I wore glasses. Period. Sometimes that look came off better than at others. I rather liked the pair I ended up with in my 60s.

But now my doctor tells me that I probably won’t have to wear glasses for driving and normal activity, but I will need a pair of reading glasses. So, when Candice and I were recently photographed we decided to try both the glasses look . . .

and the naked look (or so it seems to me).

I’m learning about letting go in life. And excessive worry over self-image—which, let’s face it, is all vanity—may be a good thing to jettison. I get it. But who is this guy?

So many of us sleepwalk through the phases of life secure in the comfortable nest of our self-image. Yet we can grow when we open up our inner places and question some of those core assumptions. Perhaps we should take a different viewpoint more frequently. As Marcel Proust once said, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

Here’s to new eyes, both figurative and literal.

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo: Anne Nygård on Unsplash