Vision forty -fied

My eyesight has cheated on me  all along.  Everyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I have a myopic sight, I can  not  see something   beyond my nose . When I was to get married, all I  could see was  a house to live for me and hubby to be  able to be under the same roof . In my dream I always saw  a house with green  sprawling  lawn , foggy weather, white  garden chairs, checked  white and  red cushions on those chairs, a  white china tea set ( matching the chairs ) filled with golden tea  but by any stretch of imagination I just could not see beyond the garden and  façade  of house,  let alone  the existence of Kitchen in the house, so when we actually entered the house  my shock knew no bounds and I almost screamed with horror  to find a kitchen  looking and    bidding me with  its sooty  eyes  to deck it up and run it.   I realized my  own  near sighted ness and the meanness of people around me to never mention it  to me .

Same goes with my job . When I picked up my job of teaching  to under grads in a college , I imagined meeting people, sitting  in  a staff room  which was always  away from  my  realm as  a student  , meeting young students ,  wielding  command over the students , dressing maturely  but I just could not foresee the regular preparation of lectures,  exam duties,  checking papers , setting up lab ,taking readings, ……….as a part of regular routine work I was expected to do .

And then,  I had this  motherly itch to hold a cuddlesome , warm, wooly bundle of joy , rub the cheeks against the baby’s  , put the baby in pram and  stroll it  and  my stretch of imagination stopped right  there. This is the best I could  foresee about my future life, roughly about 15 months from  then  . So , when the baby started growing beyond 6 months,  it came as another surprise to me . I   had never imagined and hence never was prepared to deal with  inoculations ,  Colic,  HW,  PTMs, being  interrupted in the middle of  any conversations, taking him  to loo in every single  place  I visited,  be it  hotels, roadside, on trains, planes, gardens, in a moving ship ( when I was feeling motion sick myself).

 If I had known better,  would I  have  balked  away from the idea of getting married, taking up a job or  adopted a Teddy instead ? I feel ,  I  would have probably still treaded the same path with little less element of surprise and  may be little more preparedness and, I guess  life would have been a little less adventures  more organized  .

Whenever I wanted something badly I just plunged  into it and later on dealt with its nuances. That’s the rule for me.

But myopic eyesight never converted me into a bespectacled person ,  how much ever I obsessed about the mature look enabling  glasses . Each time I visited the ophthalmologist ,I was declared  having a sight 6/6 , so much for being short sighted  all my life.

The wisest looking girl  in my class used to wear  oversized , oval rimmed glasses in black plastic frames . BOY! Didn’t she look full of wisdom and maturity ?  Right from the time I was in 9^th grade , I hankered for   glasses like hers  secretly  but since my vision betrayed me  by being perfect 6/6, I had no choice but to wait until 40 and get a FORTY-FIED vision aka reading glasses  .

It felt wonderful to have those OTC  glasses resting  on my nose and  suddenly reading felt like a child’s play. Yup!  The letters looked huge enough  as though I was reading Enid Blyton stories for young readers.  It kind of rejuvenated my love for reading once again. Just before I got these glasses I had given up on reading because most  letters kind of looked like the statutory warning written at the bottom of a cigarette’s  packet  and who reads and takes such warnings seriously ?

Anyway ,having lost the battle of foresight , braced with  myopia ,I decided to look at  life with a hind sight vision which seems to be better cooperating and giving me some semblance of wisdom acquired in my Forty -fied   vision.

As I am  treading  the path of life with all its twists and turns ,as I meet people with all their idiosyncrasies and angularities in behavior , I have  started growing some kind of understanding and  perspective. I have started detecting love  and kindness around me . I see the inspiration radiating  from people working hard , living lives for causes, keeping their cool despite challenges , dealing with unknown with calm ,having faith and patience to pursue  goals .

This hindsight has an advantage of being able to get you down from the tight  rope you think you are walking on . You realize its not a tight rope but a tenterhook  which bothers   you most. It’s the uncertainty which causes anxiety .  My hind sighted wisdom tells me that most often things fall in place, we  rise to the occasion, we  worry more in contemplating  the problems than actually attacking them.  when  the situation arose  I most often found myself having no time to mull over  and had to spring into action whether I was prepared for it or not.

No amount of foresight would have helped  me to know in advance that some people in life would look at me for support , I would be responsible for their  well being , I would be anchoring their lives .And what I once   felt were mere words  would be sought by some and from some by me (words like  “don’t worry , I am with you , everything will be fine” ) and we would have unwavering  faith on those words.

The fortified vision has enabled me with a hell lot of reassurance about myself. I care less about opinions of strangers .I know they have better things to worry about like catching a bus , paying telephone bill on time or  fixing  a leaking tap at  home  than paying attention to my looks.

Now I know that   when  my husband insists on Corn flakes being kept always in its original cardboard box  and never be  decanted into another plastic jar , he is just being  he ,  a husband having some innocuous  maverick idea ,he has absolutely no disrespect for  my Pearlpet jars.

Now I know that when husband asks me to  “ go get a proper hair cut”, he is not undermining the freedom of looks of  entire feminine  population  , he just means it about me because he can not stand  my disheveled hair look.

 Now I know  that whenever  kid -2  has some HW to do , he needs a  washroom break  within 2 minutes of starting up and I am patient because I know , he is being he , a 9 year old  whose motor controls are better at video games than holding a pencil and he is absolutely not against forced learning.

Now I know that when parents worry about my not calling them up often enough , it's none of my business to teach them  not to worry  but understand that  they are just being  parents .

Now I know that when I worry   about my hostler  son who does not respond to mails , takes phone calls in the ratio of 1:10 , I am not supposed to get angry ,he is just being a young fella surrounded by others his age and has a whole new world open to him to explore. Also , I am not angry  with myself because I can not  help  feeling anxious about his unresponsiveness  because I know that I am being ‘me’ , an extension counter  of emotions my parents are.

The hind sighted vision has taught me to not try to read  too much out of people or situation. Read the plain and simple ,  consider everything else is written in Chinese .