Glasses

I've worn glasses from probably the 3rd grade or so. As I've gotten older my vision has gotten poorer and now I truly couldn't live with out wearing my glasses. I always joke that I would love to be dropped off in the Colorado mountains in a pretend plane crash just so that I could use all of my survival skills, the only problem is I wear glasses and if I lost them in the crash I'd probably die out there because I wouldn't be able to see anything, my skills and knowledge would be void. Without my corrective lenses in the wild, Darwin would win, I would die, the bear with the good vision would eat me and my genes would be taken out of the pool. Oh well, it would still be fun to try.

When I was in high school I would take long bike rides and often when I was coasting down a long stretch of lonely road enveloped on either side by thick evergreens and underbrush I would see this picture that I can still see today. It is hard to explain this image, and more of them like it, that are stuck in my head. One time I wanted to photograph it, rig a camera up on my bike and try to capture what I was seeing, but it seemed too impossible, so still today, they are stuck in my head.

Let me try to explain... These images all had the same common thread, my glasses, or maybe better yet, the view of life through my glasses. Most of the time I don't even notice them, I walk around capturing the visions of life as I pass through it with no thought of the mechanical optics sported on the bridge of my nose. But sometimes I do notice it, in the most profound ways. Images that are imprinted in the crazy mystery of my brain. Sometimes music triggers the playing of a series of these frames, sometimes a smell, sometimes a de-ja vu sort of experience and then BAM they flood back in.

I still can't really explain why this is so profound to me... let me try to give an example of one of these stills to help explain, but first some background info...

Like I said, I wear glasses because I'm as blind as a bat, and with no sonar either, so actually blinder, or more blinded-ed, anyway... So, I have peripheral vision but things aren't clear, their blurry. The other part is that when you look out of the sides of your lens with out moving your head, you can see two of the same objects, one is blurry, one is clear. It is an effect of the bending of the light and a distortion of where things are because of it. Why do I impart the knowledge of these scientific principles to you? Because I have a point, that's why, let me get to it...

So, I'm riding my bike, back in Washington, down these narrow old roads, the trees almost forming a perfect tunnel above me in places. I'm aware of the helmet rim sitting on my brow, my hands on the bars, just a piece of the front tire in my field of vision. The phantom image of glasses frames floating in the air in front of my nose, too blurry to really notice. Things off to my left and right are all blurred too, partly from my vision, partly from the speed, almost like one of those crazy sport pictures where the runner is in focus and the background is blurred in a series of colorful streaks. The whole picture is too big to put into a normal picture, if you tried everything would be distorted, like a fish-eye lens picture. But in my mind it isn't distorted at all, surreal only because it seems impossible to have such an all encompassing image lodged in any sort of medium, even the medium of my brain. Just too perfect. Too large of image to capture. Not normal. Not right.

But why are images like these, the still frames burned into my synapses so alluring, so profound when they come back to my mind? Maybe because they are different. Maybe because they are impossible to recreate. But maybe they are so inspiring and profound for the simple reason that they are so normal yet so overlooked. Untapped images. Images that happen all the time but are simple cast out because they are not part of what is straight ahead of me. Straight through my lenses.

Like I said I forget that I wear glasses. I rarely even notice them unless it is raining, or I dive into the ocean and realize upon coming out of the wave that I can't see anymore and that I really should pay for that laser corrective surgery. It'd be cheaper than all the glasses that the ocean has claimed... and more often the sunglasses that I forget about when wearing contacts but that is a whole different story. So I forget, so normal, so needed yet so forgotten. Compensating for the bad peripheral vision by turning my head more. My neck muscles triggering as if by an arc reflex to help me function normally. But what if suddenly they are lost, a victim of a wave? I would notice then, I would notice for days. Others would also notice as I drove the freeway with out them. Oh would they notice!

The reason this is profound is not for glasses sake but how it mimic life. Things that are normal, looked over. The ones we love the most, see all the time... often treated the worst. Why? Why do we not capture all of the incredible "frames" of life more often. Why do we so often over look the beauty of creation? Of relationships. Of Community. Why do we overlook God?

I say maybe we need to take off all of our glasses, all of our frames that we don't look past the edges of, all the things that are 99% of the time unfocused and can't see a thing state, let God come in and restore our vision. Restore our vision for the things of this world, for His things. Take away that double vision. The vision that is just out of our normal reach, the one is being bent by our lenses may just be the false one.

Does this make sense? Maybe you'll just have to try on my glasses sometime.