Eyes Wide Open
“You can’t put your finger in your eye!”
Recently, my son said that to me without hesitation. I had just let him know I was leaving for a visit with the optometrist, and that I had made the appointment with one goal in mind: To come home with contact lenses. For the first time in my 49-years.
I’ve needed glasses for a few years now. Without them I have decent vision, but I have definitely come to rely on them. The whole mask-and-foggy-glasses crisis of 2020 served as all the reason I needed to wish I’d had the option of contacts. But who wanted to go to a doctor for anything not totally necessary that year? Not me. As this year began to normalize, though, with the thought of a better way now planted in my mind, my annoyance with glasses grew: Rainy days and all the countless other ways life finds to make them constantly need cleaning; let alone the dilemma that comes with sunglasses vs. glasses. The time had come.
To my son’s “encouraging” words about my plan, I confidently retorted, “Well, I’ll learn!” Then I sashayed out the door.
A few hours later, I shuffled back in. New lenses clinging to my corneas, just where the doctor had placed them. She did that, gave a little talk about what I should expect, then ushered me to the outer office where I’d watch a video about inserting and removing them, then try it myself before leaving. I watched the video, but when it came time for the “make-sure-you-can-do-it-before-you-leave” part, I politely declined. I knew it would not come easily to me at first. Who, knowing they’ll be terrible at something, wants to try it for the first time in a strange place in front of a stranger? Not me.
The doctor (and others) had warned me that takes a while to get used to wearing contacts. So, it didn’t surprise me when I left feeling like I had something in my eye… because I did (in both of them, actually); like I needed to blink (often); like everything looked a little fuzzy; like maybe I just needed a nap. All probably normal.
I got through the day, not loving anything about the experience, but still feeling encouraged. I had taken the first step. It would get better.
Then, the time came to remove them. I don’t know what I expected, but not THAT.
In retrospect, I guess I had pictured something more like touching the lens with my fingertip and lifting it right out.
But, prying my eye wide open, then using my thumb and a finger to basically pinch my own eyeball!? That is just not natural!
I had to call in reinforcements.
I ended up at the bathroom counter flanked on either side by my husband (a daily contact lens wearer himself) and my son (who, yes, had already warned me…) My husband demonstrated on his own eyeball. My son heckled (I mean “encouraged”) “C’mon. Just do it. Everybody can do it.”
Eventually, they found themselves asked to leave.
Eventually, following zero proper procedures, I somehow got the retched little window clings out of my eyes.
It would get better tomorrow.
Then, tomorrow came.
I ended up thankful I hadn’t technically watched the clock, because I surely spent at least an hour getting them in. I’d try for a while; walk away; come back; try again… Finally, somehow, I did it. Wore them all day. Didn’t love them. It was progress. It would get better. But, first, I had to remove them again. (Seeing a pattern here?)
At the end of that evening’s experience, my husband confessed he’d thought we might end up in the ER, having a contact lens removed from my temple before it made it to my brain.
“Do not EVER put those in your eyes again,” he said.
He never tries to tell me what to do. But this time? Somebody really needed to stop me.
I can just keep cleaning my glasses; perfectly content with letting that (very short!) chapter of my life end.
That really says something about me, because this week also left my eyes wide open to something else:
When it comes to “endings” – I feel way too much!
My most recent profoundly personal experience with this reality came last year, when my son’s motorcycle racing career, for all intents and purposes, ended with no real warning. We all know how rudely 2020 changed everyone’s plans. He’d had new and exciting aspirations for what we had thought would be his final season. I know he felt disappointment when a global pandemic stripped it all away. Nevertheless, we really try to live according to the belief that things happen for a reason, and we have tried to teach our kids the same. When I think of this particular situation, I think that he, at 18-years-old, handled that abrupt ending better than I did. I had to believe all along that it would lead to something even better for him. But racing had been our way of life for over seven-years. Time spent with him. Incredible memories made. To accept it as just over – just like that – made me so sad. But why? Why should it have bothered me more than it bothered him?
Sometimes I think that other people have feelings, but that I live my feelings.
In that life-shifting event, and from a mother’s standpoint, maybe it makes a little bit of sense. How many others feel a similar way right now after graduations and all the other things that happen “for the last time” at the end of a school year? If you know the feeling I mean – you know.
Even though my sadness was perhaps logical in that case, I have grown aware of how often I feel that way – even about things with way less personal significance to me.
I understand it more thanks to having studied the Enneagram over the past few years.
(Do you know what that is? Do you know your number?? If so, I can’t wait to talk to you about it! Have you never heard of it? Then I can’t wait to talk to you about it! We will do that really soon – I promise!) It has helped me understand myself so much better, and that’s the point.
I woke up last Friday morning and realized that the weekend had come for the race that, for his whole career, had been my son’s favorite. This year would mark the first time since he first began racing that we would ever miss it. So many priceless memories surround it – the breathtakingly beautiful mountaintop location; the special emotions and goosebumps that came on that starting line; our experiences as a family there; his performance there – and how good it all felt. That very real reminder that it’s just all over would once have broken my heart. But I have worked to reach a place where I can appreciate how deeply, and how vividly, I hold all the feelings surrounding those memories in my heart, and instead of crying because it’s over - smile because it happened.
I’ve worked and I’ve grown, but that process never ends.
Later that day, alone in my car, I teared up as podcast I have loved signed off with its final episode – the hosts clearly feeling bittersweet. Crying about a podcast ending!? There was a time when I would have thought “What is wrong with me?” But now I understand how much I just feel for other people, even when it has no real personal bearing on me.
As if putting me to the test this week, the endings just kept coming!
The following evening, we walked through the doors of a dimly lit, fondly familiar bar. Because we’re big bar hoppers? Not quite. (My “in-bed-by-10:00-with-a-book” self must certainly qualify as the antithesis of that.) Counting the times I’ve walked into a bar in recent memory, I can come up with a few. They all have one thing in common: I’d wanted to show up for a friend.
In this instance, that dim, familiar, faintly smoky-smelling room held memories - and people at the heart of many of them: A family celebrating the sale of the establishment - a legacy spanning four-generations. Our friends.
In complete honesty, I explained, “I wanted to come and see you all tonight – but I have to get out of here before it gets sad!” I might as well have said, “Before I end up making all of you cry – when you probably otherwise wouldn’t!”
(Believe it or not, it wouldn’t have been the first time I brought down a party, making everybody cry when they hadn’t shown up planning to feel sentimental… insert face-palm emoji here…)
They were happy. Excited about the next phase of life. I felt happy for them.
Yet because I have always admired them so - and the bond their family has shared around that business - I felt so sad to see it “end”.
Yes, I have enjoyed some great times there, especially with my own family. But the sadness I felt that evening had much less to do with that than with what I felt for my friends.
True to my plan, I spent time with them. Had some wine. Reminisced a little. Took a few “last” photos together. Gave hugs and wished them well. I meant it. Then I got out of there.
I struggle with so much more than contact lenses and endings. Some things far more fundamentally serious than these.
I’m good at something else though: Recognizing my capacity to learn, change, and grow – and at wanting to.
I think getting to really know ourselves and understand our true motivations is worth the work. For me, it has helped me distinguish very clearly between things I want to change and things that – however “flawed” – I embrace as part of how I show up to live authentically in this world.
Brené Brown said, “Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”
Sometimes we think we need to change or hide parts of ourselves in order to belong, but I increasingly believe the opposite: I think when we show up authentically – it draws others to us more than ever.
WHAT IF the place where we feel so flawed turns out to be the exact place where our superpower lives?
Could what I’ve thought of as feeling “too much” about everything be one the greatest gifts God has given me to share with others? Could the ability to feel deeply about things that don’t necessarily affect me be a gift the world could use right now?
As for the contacts thing? I don’t know. Eyeglass makers need jobs, too?? Maybe. (Also: As I climbed into bed last night, frustrated with how my time that evening had gone and how much remained undone, my husband offered consolation: “Well… At least you weren’t trying to wear contacts. Just think how much time that saved you.” He was not wrong.)
On the surface, the two things I’ve told you about today appear to have no logical connection. But when I look a layer deeper, they sure do:
They both have a whole lot to do with how I see things.
Each also represents something I have once seen as flawed, spent way too much time trying to change or “fix”, and ultimately made peace with accepting - just as it is.
I think such freedom lies right there - ours for the taking: