3-Item Status
Current Location: Milwaukee, WI
Reading: Empire of Storms by Sarah J Maas
Listening: Let Me Know by Winona Oak
If you have a moment, reply with your own 3-Item Status.
Quick Notes
New Work:
This week’s Let’s Know Things is about the Strait of Hormuz
Yesterday’s Brain Lenses essay was on Mind Blanking & the pod was about Collateral Contempt
Eye-Opening
I wear contact lenses most days, though I wear glasses while getting ready in the morning and at night before going to bed.
I got my first set of glasses (with early-model transition lenses, so I felt pretty cool and sci-fi) in middle school, after it became apparent I couldn’t see the day’s in-class math lesson that was emblazoned across the far wall by an overhead projector.
I was doing well in class, but it seemed like I was always copying off the person next to me. The teacher later realized I was just copying the questions, not the answers, and that led to an appointment with an optometrist.
I distinctly remember—even today, this many decades later—the ride home from that appointment.
Staring out the car window through my new prescription lenses, I could see the trees so clearly; the individual trunks and branches and leaves. There was so much detail, so much richness in the world. I hadn’t even realized how much I was missing out on because the slow transition from being able to see relatively well at a distance to being quite near-sighted was a slow, ponderous process.
Those sorts of incremental changes can sneak up on you, even if you think you’re keeping tabs on things and would surely notice the difference.
I was very into reading and video games, not so much into baseball and other activities for which distance acuity was vital (though I was still forced to play, which maybe explains why I was so terrified of being beaned by the ball for the duration of my Little League career), so the fact that I had to squint to see things beyond the reach of my arm never seemed worthy of comment.
What really stuck with me as a result of this experience, though, is just how much there is to see in the world around me that I simply wasn’t capable of perceiving for a significant chunk of my life.
Those trees always had that level of detail, but that complexity never landed in a visceral way because, well, to me all that stuff was just a sort of blur. I didn’t feel particular bothered by not being able to see it because I was focused on all the things I could perceive; all the stuff that didn’t require squinting.
Because of this jarring transition, to this day I regularly ask myself:
What am I not perceiving that I might if I had the right tools, knowledge, experiential background, or whatever else? What might I notice in the physical, cultural, or intellectual space around me?
Also, which of these currently invisible (to me) elements might enliven my existence in some fundamental way?
The answer to that first question, I’m pretty sure, is “basically everything.”
No matter how curious, adventurous, and ambitious we might be, we still miss out on all the things we haven’t gained the capacity to perceive yet, and our capacity, because of how small we are compared to the vast context in which we exist, is miniscule.
And though I hate to admit it, that’s the natural state of things.
We only have so much time and attention to spend over the course of our lives, and that means some of us will naturally gravitate toward the metaphorical equivalent of near-sightedness, while others will eschew reading and video games in favor of all the things they perceive out there beyond arm’s reach.
My recognition of these limitations, which are enforced by my physicality and finitude, doesn’t make me want to see and do and learn everything any less, it just helps me accept the fact that I’ll never be able to see and do and learn it all.
A life filled with eye-opening moments—some more literally eye-opening than others—doesn’t seem like a bad way to spend one’s time, though, even if our vision will never be absolutely perfect.
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What Else
This is the first full day of post-heat dome weather in Milwaukee, and that means I can finally do something other than sit around in AC-cooled spaces while complaining about how much I hate the (stupid, brutal, oppresive) super-humid, 95-plus (F) degree temperatures!
My girlfriend recently left to visit family on the East Coast for the better part of a month, so I’m also in the process of reestablishing the me-focused at-home rhythm I get into when left to my own devices. It’s liberating in a way, but I also have to work a lot harder to maintain a social life, so I’m adjusting my calendar and routines accordingly.
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Irasutoya: The best-known illustrator in Japan, that you’ve probably never heard of.
Love this piece, and I really enjoy the way you approach these newsletters in general. Inspiring!