Leave your glasses behind... why sometimes you don't want to see the details!

My eyesight isn't very good. It's getting worse by the year, dare I say day? I started wearing glasses in college to help me see the chalkboard better... Remember those? Do kids even know that these are? I digress... so I needed help to see from afar. I wore my glasses driving but I didn't really need them for the movies until I got older. I now must wear them for everything but upclose. I need them in the grocery store. I need them to drive. I need them while walking down the street because at this point I can see outlines but not the details. I am embarrased to think about how many times I've not recognized a friend or aquaintance in passing. It's gotten that bad. I'd truly hate for anyone to think that I am snubbing them but these days a five foot four blonde looks like every other five foot four blonde out there. I am terrible with names but great with faces. Faces that I can see that is.

Because of this I am forever losing my glasses. Those dorky eyeglass chains don't work. I've tried them. So I am constantly putting on and taking off my glasses. And when I take them off I put them down. And when I put them down I am generally distracted by whatever task is at hand and I misplace my glasses. It's not that they've been misplaced, it's more like my memory has forgotten where they were placed. Sigh... As a single mother to three who really needs her glasses to survive, this can get to be a costly mistake. I hate contacts. I've tried those too.

Now, lately, I notice that reading and other things that require close-up vision need assistance as well. Not long ago I went to CVS to purchase some magnifying glasses. They sit in my sewing kit which in itself if pretty funny. I do not sew. My mother tried to teach me. I can barely sew a button, but I can do that. When I need to replace a button I need the magnifiers to see what I'm doing. Soon these glasses will need to find themselves in a more accessible location. Suddenly I am holding my books and my iPhone further and further away. And soon the word bi and even tri-focal will become a part of my vocabulary.

Sight is hugely important to me. Detail is hugely inportant to me. As a writer and a photographer I focus in the detail. The detail of the story ... the words that paint the picture and pull everything together. The detail of the photograph... while landscapes are beautiful and breath-taking I like to focus not on the field of flowers, but the one particular flower... her petals, her colors, her filiments... perhaps there's a bee drinking her sweet nectar... these are the stories within the stories. These are the stories that I like to share. My mind wanders and notices tiny detail all the time. I tend to see things that many others overlook. I think of this as a huge gift. But it can be a detriment too and sometimes I get fixated on details that I shouldn't.

I went to my Zumba dance class the other morning just as I always do. Except I forgot my glasses. I'm always in the front row so that I can see, so I wasn't too worried about not being able to follow along - especially in the cases of newly added routines. We started to dance. Suddenly I realized that it was better not to have my glasses on. I couldn't make out or distiguish the faces in the back of the class, or even a couple of rows behind me, but I couldn't fixate on myself and my flaws either.

As I am in the front row I divide my attention between the instructor and myself. I find that I have better form and push myself harder if I can see myself. However, that morning I also discovered something interesting. I discovered that I was doing better because I couldn't see myself clearly. This might seem a bit confusing, but you see because I couldn't see my own details I couldn't fixate on them... on my flaws... on my hips and and waist and everything else that catches my eye and causes me to overanalyze myself... causes me to fixate on myself. So without the glasses the hips look a little smaller, my belly looks a little flatter... maybe it's an illusion - I don't know. I don't care. What I do know is that it's nice not being distracted by my flaws... it's nice not focusing on my flaws and looking at the overall picture... whether the image is blurry or not... I am quite liking the image. And because of this I have vowed never to wear my glasses to another Zumba class ever again!

It's amazing how freeing it is to look at oneself and not to be able to see faults, but only the good!
May this be a lesson to us all. We all have things we hate about ourselves. Let's try really hard not to look at those areas and focus instead on the good ones!

XOXO,

Jessica