I reach for my glasses every morning although I no longer need my glasses. The new lens in my right eye is working fine and I see well except for reading. A friend told me that since I now needed readers it meant I was old. I will accept that designation with glee because I can now see with a sharpness, I apparently lost many years ago without even knowing it. Strange how things happen like that. We go along thinking everything is just fine, then along comes a surgery and suddenly we see what we were missing.

It happens in other aspects of life as well. There were people I worked with over the years and some cases many years with whom I believed a friendship had formed. Yet, when we parted ways at work the contact evaporated until eventually, I saw the relationship in a new light with a sharp focus. Their friendship had been one of expediency. I wasn’t being used so much as they were doing what they could to keep the waters calm and get what they needed. Me? I was seeing what I wanted to see.

Of course, there were a fair number of work friendships that endured. So, all is not lost. But it did point out to me that life is often more than it seems, and my perception tends to develop a version of cataracts, i.e., seeing what I want to see, that cloud my judgement from time to time. There’s no magical surgical cure. Only time. And it will eventually tell. When it does, I slap my forehead in recognition, heave a deep sigh, wonder when I’ll stop making that mistake, and plod on down the road. A tiny bit worse for the wear, but a tiny bit wiser, as well.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale