Wednesday 30 January 2013

HYPEROPIC VISION

You may remember that I stood on a chair before Christmas to put up some decorations and, as a friend pointed out, not having first conducted a health and safety audit, succeeded in putting my head through the pendant lamp.  It didn't hurt me.  But it destroyed the lamp.

Today, after weeks of negotiation and disagreement, we chose a new lamp - one that is almost flush with the ceiling and thus well away from my head.  Even standing on a chair.  And I fitted it!

The problem is, I can't really see.  From a distance, I'm fine.  From here, I can read a car number plate in the next village.  I can see the slightest movement of a cat in my shrubbery (and am not a bad shot with a potato gun either).  But look at a newspaper and, no matter how much I screw up my face and squint, I can't read anything past the headlines without a magnifying glass.  Or at times a telescope.

So rewiring the ceiling light, in the half dark of course with the power turned off, standing on a chair to reach, with screws the size of an ant's head (without the useful antennae markers), and my neck bent back 90 degrees, was a bit of a challenge.  Discovering the fitting instructions were in Dutch didn't help.  Anyway, I finally connected the schroefs to the draads and  . . . we have light.

But it occurred to me, as I sat here trying to ease my neck joints back into shape and swallowing Paracetamol to ease the incipient headache, that this is a great metaphor for life.  I don't mean that having guidance in an incomprehensible foreign tongue and eventually seeing the light is what life is all about, although it might be.  But that sometimes we have to step back to see properly what's going on.

It doesn't matter how strong my binoculars are, it doesn't matter how high the chair is, it certainly doesn't matter how far back I force my head nor into what grotesque shape I contort my body, I can't see that damn screw and take in what is required until I retreat a little.  And shouldn't we all do that more often to get a fix on how the detail relates to the broad picture? 

Sometimes small things become too important.  At times what is just a part of the whole takes on the appearance and significance of the whole of the whole.  Sometimes we have to back off to see what's really important.  And then we hit the stupid thing with a big hammer and it's done.


10 comments:

  1. I wanted to copy and paste too many of your comments. I am learning to slough off the small things but still am fretting about the "what ifs".

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  2. Ppfsst I hear you on the vision adjustments we have to do these days. Sometimes it pisses me off and sometimes I slap my face and say, "Be glad you can still see."

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    1. Not sure about the face slapping, but I do often kick things in frustration. You're right though - I can see.

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  3. Congratulations of the achievement of fitting the new light. Being the DIY disaster area that I am, it's not something I usually attempt myself, for fear of either burning the place to the ground or electrocuting myself.

    My vision is akin to yours, I can see things happening in other star systems, but if it's closer than five feet I require a visual enhancement device.

    I loved the philosophy on the final three paragraphs and then nearly choked, laughing, on my monring coffee with the final sentence.

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    1. I probably ought to stop this sort of DIY now, Mitch, but I've just saved myself £50 . . . Now for the kitchen improvements. Hmmm.

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  4. May I suggest perhaps a visit to the opticians for an eye test. your symptons sound exactly as mine were before I had my first reading glasses (have now progressed to full glasses). I could see until the next village almost, but reading had a blurred circle in the middle. I had been working on the computer for a few years and that was probably the beginning of the end. That was about 20 years ago. Today I have to wear my glasses for long distance and closeup. As far as DIY is concerned, Mr. Swiss is not really cut out for that. After 2 attempts to construct our new cat ladder (sort of spiral cat staircase) it is now perfect. Only problem is that the cats refuse to use it.

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  5. I've been prescribed multifocals, Pat, which are fine for distance and reading on my lap. The problem come when trying to look at something close over my head instead of under my chin. My neck isn't that shape!

    Ha ha, cats will go their own way (as you no doubt already know!).

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  6. I have been short-sighted since my teens Neil... so a couple of years or so, ahem!

    In the last two or three though I've begun to find that my arms aren't quite long enough and my laptop not quite far enough away to read with my glasses on. As a result I'm increasingly wearing my glasses in the middle of my forehead and have started to develop a couple of marks above my eyebrows where the nose rests spend most of their time.

    My wife has suggested I should just admit that I need varifocals... but that's ridiculous. Only old people wear varifocals!

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    1. You're right - only old people wear varifocals. I decided to go for them after getting fed up with not being able to see who was coming into my office and then afterwards not being able to see what I had been reading. And incidentally needing sunglasses when I went outside. So I now have one pair of glasses (varifocal and polychromatic) instead of three. Of course, these days, you can have longer arms grafted on.

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  7. No sympathy over being shortsighted : join the club; but huge amounts of understanding and congratulations over fitting lights in the ceiling. They can be so difficult!! You obviously did a great job.

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