The novel depicted the final visions of a man who was told that he was going blind the next day. On his remaining hours before darkness veiled his eyes, the man torturously wandered about the city of Sydney, the city he had known all his life, and yet saw it as if it were for the first time.
"It's funny how things seem different when you know you're never gonna see them again," he mused. The mundane details of the world had suddenly magnified in both manifestation and meaning. From water spewing forth from a fountain, to bicycles tethered from a post, and a sailboat floating in the afternoon, everyday things people often take for granted had repossessed its beauty. Colors had recalled their vibrance, like in the solitary autumn leaf on the pavement, in tomatoes peddled on a cart, and even the graffiti painted on the walls.
"Today, I did something I haven't done in my entire life, " the man said. "I paid attention."
Thankfully, the moment's reflection was not prompted by my own loss of eyesight. It was the reverse in fact, yet the sublime insight of the film remained: "When you really pay attention, you shake the world up like a snow globe and true beauty comes true."
After having the vision of a cave-dwelling bat all my life, I had finally gained a better eyesight thanks to my glasses. The best part of wearing glasses again (I once wore glasses when I was 13, but I lost them and it took me three years later to get a new one) is waking up the next day and wearing them. It was a different world. No longer a vague miasma of floating shapes. For the first time in my life, just like in the book, I paid attention.
I stared at everything, and started to notice things that had always been there but I had only seen for the first time. The overlapping colors on the spines on my books, the countless shades of green on the tree leaves on my window...even the sunlight seemed to have taken on a different glow that morning. It was my shaken-up snow globe of a world. Did everybody else see the world like this? Truly, waking up to details had become a vanishing art to those blessed at birth with perfect vision.
As for me, I could only be too happy to begin mastering this art of seeing again. Maybe one day, I can have a LASIK treatment to correct my eye abnormalities and to bring back my 20/20 vision, but right now, I guess I just have to stick to my glasses. . I must admit, they can be a pain in the ass sometimes, specially when I keep on forgetting where I placed them. But I'm lovin' it! Besides, I have a lot of saving to do considering that LASIK treatment costs a fortune. Well, that's it for now. ^_^
