This morning, on the way home from Cardiac Rehab, after walking three miles on the treadmill, and still being in the same place, I was again struck by how lucky people with 20-20 eyesight are.

I always had marginal vision, even with my corrective lenses. It wasn’t until I got cataract surgery a couple months ago that I realized how much I had been missing in the seeing things department. The surgery was like an instant fix to a lifetime of seeing things blurred.

Since then, almost every day, I marvel at the things that I can now see clearly. I will be just driving along on the way to a job, and find myself gobsmacked by something that I had passed a hundred times, and never really saw. Sometimes I just pull over to the side of the road, so I can look at something with more than a passing glance. Like this morning, looking at a Dogwood tree that had buds of new flowers ready to burst out into bloom. It was beautiful and amazing.

It isn’t often, in my dotage, that something really surprises me. Yesterday, while sitting on my back porch and reading in my current book, Blink, about the power of subliminal problem solving, I was putting my ipad down, and getting ready to go finish a job I had resolving two leaking windows in a house by removing the trim and finding where the water was getting inside the wall, fixing it, and putting it back together, I glanced up at my bird feeders, and saw a bird that I had not seen before. The moment that I saw it, my subliminal mind told me that I was seeing some sort of warbler. It was surprising that I could see such detail in a glance, and even more surprising that my brain knew somehow, at a glance, that it was a warbler. Not many warblers come to my feeders.

I have set my bird feeders at a distance from my lounge chair on my back porch, that they are at the minimal distance that my binoculars can focus on, and all I have to do is snatch them up, and the feeders are in perfect focus without having to adjust the focus wheel. Yes, it was a warbler. I didn’t get a clear look before he flew away, and when I grabbed my bird book from beside my chair, I was unable to decide which warbler it was. But it had a Warbler beak, and was light green all over.

The point is, I was able to see enough at first glance without binoculars, to send my brain sifting back through my many years of bird watching, and come up with the identification that it was a warbler. I could never have done that before the cataract operation.

I remember back in college, taking Ornithology class, and being amazed at what looking through binoculars availed me of. Everything was so clear. The other members of my class would be exclaiming at what they were seeing, while I was scanning trying to see where the bird they were looking at was. But having blurry vision with just my glasses, it was hard to spot the birds we were observing, as we trudged through the forest, in the post dawn light, and it was just luck that I could find them in the binoculars. Over the years I learned to spot movement, so I would know where to point the binocs.

The world is so clear now, and more enjoyable to observe as a result. It is an epiphany every day. It is a beautiful world that we live in, and I never want to take that for granted. I don’t just stop and smell the roses, I look at them too.
Am I a lucky boy, or what? <3