I Can See Clearly Now
On shifting baselines, grumpy old men and memory palaces. Plus, plant-based snacks!
The day I wore glasses for the first time remains one of my most vivid childhood memories. At nine years old, I walked out of the suburban Calgary shopping mall to a parking lot bursting with detail. I’ll never forget the sheer awe I felt seeing all the fine edges of the leaves on their individual branches, bustling in the breeze.
The strange thing about living in a body is that you don’t always notice when it’s changing. The outside world had been getting increasingly blurry over the past 18 months, but it wasn’t until I had difficulty making out the TV screen at my Air Bnb a few weeks ago that I realized my vision might have declined. My optometrist recently confirmed my suspicion—all the time spent indoors staring up close at screens has worsened my distance prescription. “Contact wearers are notoriously stubborn, they tend to settle for discomfort,” he told me. Apparently we don’t even realize how much we grow ac…