10 days after eye surgery

 

I had waited or put off getting eye surgery for as long as I could or as long as I felt that I could get away with diminishing sight in my right eye. For a time, I even found myself preferring to see less of the world around me. Fewer distractions, not having to actually look into people’s eyes and see myself, that kind of thing. For the most part, my left eye took up the slack so to see enough of the world around me, while my mind handled the recalibrations so that (at least for the first three years), I rarely even noticed the blurriness. 

 I guess, though, once calcification (or whatever it’s called) sets in under the lens of the eye, there isn’t that much in today’s medicine that’s going to stop it. Which brings me to why I waited so long, especially given that Taiwan's national health insurance covers the entire basic procedure and materials once you reach 55 years old – which was about 2 ½ years ago for me.

 The surface explanation is, I just couldn’t seem to get enough information to make an informed decision. It’s still somewhat of a riddle to me, almost embarrassing, yet not quite that, as to why I’m not fluent in Mandarin after almost thirty years. While I’m able to    communicate with ease very well when it comes to day to day topics, specialized topics are much more challenging. 

Whereas with Latin and Germanic languages, I find it quite simple to guess how to pronounce many words, the words (on the surface in most cases) of the Chinese language and all of its dialects have almost zero resemblance to English, Latin or any of the Germanic languages. 

 The short story is, whenever I want to speak about an unfamiliar field, such as cataract surgery, I need to learn lots of new vocabulary which won't continuously be readily accessible to me unless I recharge the vocabulary by regularly using it — which I don’t.  Thus it was quite challenging for me to get the information I needed to make an informed decision. And while I studied extensively on the internet, the medical industry doesn’t seem to do reviews for cataract procedures and materials like they do with computers, cars and appliances. 

 So I waited five years (which was in many ways simply another experiment for me) to finally commit to having the organic lens of my right eye removed and replaced with an acrylic one, and now I’m once again able to see very clearly. 

 And as for my previous reluctance to actually “look” into people’s eyes (to see them as me), I’ve gotten over that and now find it quite enjoyable to look into the eyes of others. I guess the reason I used to be hesitant to really look into the eyes of others, was to put it simply, due to a lack of self-honesty.  When I look into the eyes of others, I feel as though I see the nature of them. However, I also see the nature of myself as a reflection of them, which is cool when I’m standing self-honestly, yet not so cool if I’m not. Thankfully, I’ve been working on self-honesty; I have made a lot of progress and I now enjoy seeing clearly once again.

Correcting Corrupted Commitments

In the last couple of months, I have written some posts relating to commitments and my fickleness in address them. Here, I would like to like to close this subject out some clarification and a written commitment in relation to making commitments.

A common theme associated with the thought of making a “commitment”, as far back as I remember is that, I had defined it in a negative sense, as though someone or something else out there would be putting pressure on me in the form of expectations, dependency or need. Thus, whenever it came to commitments, whenever I made them in relation to others, I would often speak words, deceptively designed to get what I wanted out of the deal, often  appearing as though I I were making an agreement, while in reality, my words contained conditions as getaway routes for me. I am speaking only of the words of so-called commitments I spoke, not the words of commitments I wrote. We tend to hear what we want to hear.

The case in point that I’m mainly speaking/writing of here, has to deal with my commitment to do extra work for the university. It is work that I wanted to do and would like to continue doing. Moreover, I didn’t want them to give this particular work to anyone else.  However, I have also come to realize that, work around here can pile up very quickly. Thus, when it came to committing to do the work, I specifically chose to “speak” words containing conditions, rather than “write” them down. Thus, from my perspective, on the surface I was being honest in stating my conditions. However, when I brought this point back to me to take complete responsibility for and direct it, I realized that as my starting point commitment included a point of deception, that one point of deception ended up corrupting the entirety of the agreement in relation to others.

Thus, in looking at my history of committing with sounds meant to deceive, I see that in attempting to manipulate others, I had only been deceiving myself. For example, last semester when my mom passed away, I ended up having to slow down and take some time off. From my perspective, this was Ok because I had specifically conditioned my “verbal” agreement to account for such a situation. However, as there was nothing in writing, I had little to say in reply to accusations that I had promised to do this work, period. In other words, in verbalizing my commitments conditioned with reasonable exceptions hidden in my sentences, I ended up corrupting my starting point with deception, thereby sentencing myself by own deception. Specifically, in choosing not to write out my and specify my commitment (opting instead for a little deception),  I ended up denying myself  (and others) a written record of my commitment - that would have included the conditions of my commitment.  Thus, whereas I had believed I was manipulating others by talking duplicitously, I was in reality only manipulating myself. Of this point, I now see/realize that, in all cases the best way for me to address and deal with any kind of commitment is to write it down as specifically as possible. Herein, the next time I find myself at a point of communicating the extent of my commitment or commitments, I commit to communicate self-honesty in writing, specifying the extent of my commitment including any conditions or reservations that I may have.