#54 Eye Can See Clearly Now
Well, the results are in, and I can now officially claim to have undergone a successful laser eye surgery. It’s been three weeks since the surgery, and so far, nothing awful has happened to my perfect vision; I did not go blind (which means that I did not get to resume smoking cigarettes), and within 12 hours of the surgery, I was already in my car, driving, and seeing the world better than I could ever remember having seen it before the surgery. Since the surgery, so many friends have called, emailed, or seen me in person to ask me all about the surgery that I’ve decided to dedicate one more column to the exhilarating experience that was my laser eye surgery operation. I have to admit, however, that despite the incredible new clarity of vision I now possess, something I didn’t bargain for has also come for free with my laser eye surgery…
Before the surgery, I couldn’t make out someone’s face on the street unless they were within ten feet of me. When driving, I couldn’t read exit signs until they were pretty close to my car, causing me to often switch lanes at what seemed to my passengers as the last second in order to exit a highway on time. But now, things have changed! Now, I can see someone from fifty feet away, and not only can I see them, and properly identify them if I know them, but regardless of who they are, I can tell if they are smiling, wearing an indifferent expression, or if they are upset and frowning. What this means is that I can see human emotions from a distance now, and for me, this can be a scary thing!
This newfound clarity of human emotion from afar only exacerbates my already overly empathetic condition in life. For example, one of the first things I saw with my new eyes on the first day after the surgery was a one legged homeless person on the side of the freeway onramp, smiling, and holding a sign that read; “I only have one leg, please help me. God Bless.” Normally, or I should say, before my surgery, I would have only seen a vague shape, resembling an unkempt individual holding a piece of cardboard, right up until my car was next to him, but thanks to my surgery, I now see a very real person, with a real face, and a real personal history, holding a sign that I can easily read, from about ten cars away.
My new eyesight has enabled me to clearly see this man and his sign, from afar, and so my mind has more than enough time to wonder about how it is that I ended up with two legs, newly corrected eyesight, and the ability to work for a living that provides me with enough money to own a car, and to fuel said car, and also the ironic ability to so often ignore those who do not have what I do; namely a good job, access to money, and most of all, the basic access to a complete, fully functioning normal human anatomy.
Before my surgery, it was easy to ignore homeless men and their signs, because I couldn’t read them until I was already driving past them, but now, with this accursed new eyesight, I can read his sign from the back of the line. So my empathetic heart leaps, and I swallow hard, reach into my wallet (also known as the tomb, or the vault, given how rarely I use it) and I pull out a crisp one-dollar bill, unroll my window, and hand this man my ‘hard earned’ cash. After all, he’s obviously not lying about his lack of a leg, so I really can’t demonize him in order to justify keeping my own money.
So I hand him the money, and he thanks me, quite nicely. Now I’m driving along, and I am left feeling pretty curious about the homeless population of our world. I wonder if homelessness is a choice, or a fate, and how much of my time and concern I should devote to trying to help a group of people that, for the most part, I don’t think want any of my help. I’ve always assumed that most of the homeless people I encounter don’t want to get a haircut and a real job, but rather, only want as much of my money as it takes to procure enough drugs or alcohol to get them through another night on the streets.
Then I feel like a total jerk for thinking this way. That is until a few days later, I find myself walking past a group of homeless people on Grand Ave., about two blocks from my apartment. This group of men and women are loudly laughing and joking with one another about how ‘drunk they already are, and how it’s only two o’clock in the afternoon.’ Funny, I think, I’ve often heard spoiled college kids saying the exact same phrase; only they’re usually lounging about in a park, tossing a Frisbee and drinking tasty beers, not dressed in the same clothes they’ve been wearing for months, drinking cheap vodka out of a plastic cup from 7-11.
Now, perhaps my exposure to the homeless population is a natural repercussion of living in the Pacific Northwest, where the law enforcement, compared to the other cities I’ve lived in, doesn’t seem to care at all about hiding the local homeless population. But somehow, I doubt this, I think that just like the old song goes, “I can see clearly now, the poor vision is gone” (I think the original version had something to do with rain being gone, but I live in Portland, Oregon, a place where the rain is NEVER gone.). And now that I can see clearly, it’s harder to ignore what I know everyone else must see as well.
My mind further wonders: Is there a secret ingredient in laser eye surgery that turns a heart into a liberal, mushy, weak, and pathetic organ, or is this all some bizarre coincidence, and I’m simply becoming more humanistic? Maybe with Vonnegut gone someone needs to pick up all the newfound slack, and continue to push humanity to love one another, and maybe I am that someone. I don’t know, all I know is that with my new vision, it’s a lot harder to ignore a stranger’s unhappy expression, and so it’s now harder for me to pretend that I don’t see a lot of the everyday misery that surrounds me.
At any rate, giving a little bit of my money to a man with only one leg made me feel just fine. I appreciated this guy’s style; he wasn’t pushy; he was just being honest. His sign didn’t try to make me feel like his predicament was my fault, or that I owed anything to him. Rather, it simply asked me to please help, and I did, and I feel good about this.
But there are more things than I bargained for that came about from my experience of trying to buy an intangible like good vision. For example, with my new eyesight, another thing that I can see more clearly from my car is the definition on road kill. Instead of seeing a furry brown lump in the road, I now clearly see a dead, mutilated squirrel, with well defined limbs coming out of its torso in odd directions, and I can make out the bloodstains on its puffy, rigor mortis induced chest. And this makes me think about how often a car will lackadaisically kill a creature, and keep on driving, as if the road kill were akin to a fallen, deceased leaf from a tree. And as I bicycle by one of the local cemeteries, from the road, I can now actually read the larger names on some of the headstones, bringing me closer to something I always try to avoid; thinking about death.
People who know me well probably think that I enjoy thinking about death, since I write and speak so often of my so-called irrational fears of different things that could kill me. But to attach these notions with the idea that I like thinking about them, is nothing short of absurd. Before my surgery, I had a hard enough time trying to ignore the problems of the world I live in, (Thanks again, neo-cons!), but now, it seems that I have to actually see the details of the misery I knew existed, but before I only saw in blurry glimpses.
I think this is why so many politicians try to get their votes from people who live in candy-land like suburbs. In suburbs, local police will usually arrest a vagrant for attempting to panhandle, or for setting up a tent anywhere within their town limits. In the suburbs (where I grew up, incidentally) you thereby don’t normally have to deal with many of the social issues, like homelessness, that you read about in the local metro section of your city newspaper. But when you live in the city, you’ve got to deal with seeing many of the social ills that most of our society only reads about in the news, from their comfy homes, set apart from the real world that they are reading about.
Upon editing this column, I find that it seems to wobble and ramble, like a tire that’s almost too flat to ride on, but still barely capable of supporting its vehicle for another couple of miles. My message is that vehicle, and this column is that almost too flat tire, but I kind of like this, because it’s quite reflective of how I feel about the social ‘illness’ that is homelessness – I tend to wobble. Meaning that I’m not quite sure what to think. I often justify my lack of concern for the homeless upon the basis that being homeless, just like being a police officer, a 7-11 clerk, or a U.S. Marine, is a choice that one makes in life, and you shouldn’t ever second guess another person’s personal choice. But then I wonder about certain homeless people, particularly the ones who are missing limbs or mental acumen, and I wonder if they ever made a choice, or if our society made the choice for them. And then I wonder if life is even supposed to be fair…
The first morning after my new, awesome vision came into fruition, all I could keep thinking were absurd thoughts like “Thank god I’m safe, and my vision is so great!” and “Thank god for laser eye surgery, I get to see a whole new world now!” But this happy trip was cut short when someone else decided to show me up, by hobbling to a freeway onramp, with a sign asking me for help, and telling me that god blesses those who aid others in need of help. So instead of thanking god for allowing me to see better, I’d instead like to thank him or her for compelling me to get in touch with my very real feelings of compassion and humility. And I’d like to further thank them for creating a world in which no matter how often I think that the grass is greener for someone who seems to have it better than me, there are also plenty of examples of grass that is muddier and less well kept than my own. And now, thanks to the magical combination of great vision and relentless empathy, I can trust that as much as I long to flee this society to live alone, ‘hermiting’ my way to enlightenment, I know for sure that “no man is an island.”
