Seeing what you want to see

I’ve worn glasses since I was four and contact lenses since I was 16. I still think my contacts were one of the best gifts I ever received from my parents. The gift of sight, with no frames, nothing to cloud or change what my eyes could see.

I wear hard lenses because I have such poor eyesight and soft lenses don’t work for me. Two weeks ago one of my lenses disintegrated as I cleaned it and then the following week, the other did the same… strange. That had never happened to me before but I ordered new ones based on my past prescription.

For the past week I’ve been wearing my new lenses and all week I’ve been thinking something was weird but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Sometimes my distance vision was good. Sometimes my close range vision was good. My eyes kept seeming to adjust. And strangely I didn’t need my reading glasses that I wear over top of my lenses (see, my eyes really are bad).

So today I went to the optometrist for a check on my new lenses. It turns out the factory sent me lenses to give me monovision by mistake – so I haven’t been going crazy. I can see distance with my right eye and read or see close up with my left. And it’s working perfectly.

I had tried monovision a couple of years ago and psychologically couldn’t get it to work for me. It drove me crazy and in the end sent me back to contact lenses for distance and wearing glasses additionally for reading.

But this past week I didn’t know that’s what the factory had done. So my brain just accepted it. My right eye has taken over for driving or looking out at distance like when I’m walking Reg. My left eye has carried all the work as I read or write. And for the middle stuff – cooking, meeting with people, etc, both eyes work together or decide which one should do the work.

I find it interesting that when I knew I was trialling monovision a few years ago, I couldn’t get used to it. I found every excuse in the book to reject it.

Without knowing that I was using monovision this time, my brain just accepted it and has got on with living.

I think too often that’s what happens in life. We let our preconceptions frame our perception. When we think we’ll see something, that’s what we end up seeing. As my optometrist said, “Our brains only see what we want to see.”

When we pull back, give it up to the Universe, and let it lead us, we often find that we discover something very different than what we originally believed or thought.

How often do we get caught up in believing what we think we see, rather than what is?

Lately, I’ve been exploring a number of ideas of things that I’ve thought most of my life. And like most people, some of those ideas were formed when I was a child. What did I see that formulated that opinion? Was it true? Or what I just thought was true at the time? And how did that idea then inform how I saw the world as I got older?

The more I explore, the more I understand I have a big issue with trust and who I believe I can trust in my life. Do my preconceptions around trust frame my perceptions about trusting the Universe or trusting various people in my life? I’m sure they do.

So how do I try something different? To try and get used to monovision I had to trick my brain into acceptance. I don’t feel comfortable ‘tricking’ my psyche into trusting someone or something. I’ve been tricked before by people…that’s what’s caused part of my issue. So how do I move to trust? Do I have to look at trust differently or from a different angle?

My solution has been meditation, with a certain mantra specifically on trust. I started using this particular meditation months and months ago, but this week it has come into its own and is helping. And ironically, the more I give it up and trust in the Universe, the more the root cause and issues that led to the problem in the first place are revealed to me.

But much like the fact that adjusting to monovision has made my eyes tired, all the meditating, journaling and reflecting on trust this week has made me tired too. I’m tired of not trusting people. I’m tired of not trusting myself. And right now, I’m just tired.

I think I’ll go take out my lenses and head to bed. Maybe it will all look differently in the morning.