MANILA, Philippines?There was a flash of light in my eyes, and all of a sudden, I remembered a scene from ?Blinding.?
The short film, directed by Cannes award-winning director Carlo Ledesma, depicted the final visions of a man who was told he was going blind the very 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 on 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 gained 20/20 vision, thanks to a two-minute procedure that I had put off for so long before saying ?eye do.?
I finally saw the light, quite literally, in a laser beam.
Lightness of being
I had my eyes ?lasered? at the American Eye Center. The operation, called LASIK (laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis) is a type of refractive laser eye surgery that corrects myopia (nearsightedness), hyperopia (farsightedness), and astigmatism.
Admittedly, the procedure sounds terrifying, especially when you find out that you?re wide awake the whole time, reminiscent of a scene in ?A Clockwork Orange.? During the operation, a thin flap is created on the eye, and folded in order remodel the corneal stroma with an excimer laser.
While lying down, my eyes were kept wide open by an eye speculum that holds the eyelids in place. It was impossible to blink, but my eyes were constantly washed by a cool solution. Anesthetic eye drops were then applied, and so all I had to do was follow the doctor?s simple orders, to look at the light. It took all of two minutes. It was virtually pain-free.
The best part about the whole experience was waking up the next day.
It was a different world. No longer a vague miasma with floating shapes that came into focus only after stumbling to the bathroom to stick blobby contacts into my eyes.
For the first time in my life, just like in the film, 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 curving grooves on wood that formed patterns on the walls. The overlapping colors on the spines of my books. The countless shades of green on the tree leaves outside 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. My God, I thought, 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.
For more information about LASIK, contact The American Eye Center at 6360762 or mobile +639175273763, or log on to www.EyeCenter.com.ph.
