A Change In Perspective

I thought I was going blind. One day in the middle of May I realized that the vision in my left eye was all blurry. Half of my field of vision was covered with a brown curtain, the other half was like looking through a half inch of water. How strange, all of a sudden I couldn't see right.


I went to my apartment, I was living in Viet Nam at the time, and searched the internet. Big mistake. I was sure I was going blind. So many possibilities and all bad. I hoped that it was just temporary, but I knew deep down that it was serious. By the end of the week I had figured out that I had a detached retina. If not taken care of I would go blind. And chances were that what caused it in one eye could cause it to happen in the other.

I should have left Viet Nam immediately, but I was scheduled to leave in two weeks. I didn't want to make my students nervous and I didn't know for sure what was going on. Although if I did have a detached retina they said I should have it looked at immediately. Fool that I am I stayed till the end of May and saw my opthamologist the first day back in Rhode Island.

I did have a detached retina. Fortunately, if you believe in fortune, my eye looked surprisingly healthy, and the macula was still attached. (If it was not I would be really screwed.) On June 3rd my eye was stuck with a needle and a gas bubble inserted. I had to spend the next two weeks in bed laying on my right side so the bubble could push my retina back in place. Amazing. No cutting was necessary to fix the tear in my retina. But..and this is a big but...they used a laser to "tack weld" the retina in place permanently. And that hurt like hell. Like someone sticking needles in your eye.

It's been a month now. My vision significantly improved, but is far from back to normal. My doctor said that this is it, but everything I read on the internet says it will take several months for the eye to heal and the body to remove the fluid behind the retina which is causing my vision to look like I'm seeing through water. So, who knows what will happen. And I still have a 15% chance of the same thing happening to my other eye.

I know now that I most likely will not go blind, but, I could end up with bad vision in one or both eyes. Who knows? I admit I'm a little nervous. But, I keep hearing a voice in my head. I've heard this voice all through my ordeal. It says to me that "the universe is a safe place." And  "don't worry, nothing happens by chance." Do I ask "the universe" to heal my eye and make it all better, of course. And at the same time I feel a strong sense of peace that whatever does happen is best for my soul. Nothing goes wrong in our universe. There is a plan and a reason behind everything that happens to us. That is my perspective, even if my vision must change.

How Choices Are Not Always Helpful

Do you think having a lot of choices is good? Of course we do. Who wants to go to a restaurant and not have a lot of dishes to pick from? Yeah, well, this is not always the case. I was watching a video about this very subject today that argued this way.


Click here to see video: Choice: Less is More

Anyway you can check this out if you are interested. (The whole series of these videos is interesting. They are great speakers who come to speak to Google employees. I watch them in the morning while I do my yoga.)

So, okay, it makes sense to me after listening to the guy. But how does this apply to the real world? Then I thought about my living in Vietnam and how all of a sudden I started seeing all the things I didn't like about it. Before that, I loved everything. Well, most everything. Still, the change happened almost over night. And you know when that change occurred? Right after I got photos and emails from my daughter Gina living in Arizona and how wonderful and beautiful it is there. And I started thinking that I could move there.

Choice. I now had another place that I could live. Of course, because I was not living there I only fantasized about how wonderful it would be. And that is exactly when I began noticing all the things I didn't like about Vietnam.

The end result was a lot of anguish. There are a lot of people I love there. There are a lot of reasons for me to be there. But, now I also saw the bad. What to do? I spent a sleepless night and then days trying to decide what to do. In the end I decided to postpone coming back to Vietnam after the Christmas holidays and give Arizona a try. I believe that after living there a while I will see all the things I don't like about it also. Such is the nature of having choices.

I wonder how many marriages and relationships have ended because of this principle. Or jobs that we left. Or towns moved away from. (And countries.)

So what is the benefit of knowing this? Probably just being aware of how this works will be helpful in the future. I must know that when I have another choice it will always look better than what I have. It may be, but I can't know. I must not act so fast or assume what I don't know. I do know that I am headed for Arizona now, wondering what will happen, and glad that I do have options to go back to my original choice. But beware, often we don't have that option. Sometimes choices cannot be reversed.