Losing a part of me

Even Superman looked stupider in glasses

On the 16,935th day after I was born, I was forced to visit an Ophthalmologist because my eyes were simply giving up.

I was told that given that I am well past 40 (in fact, 6 years, 4 months, and 12 days past 40), I should consider myself having won some sort of medal for not wearing reading glasses and reward my tired eyes with some assistance they sorely needed.

After several trials (and errors), it was decided that I have a +1.25 on both sides and need corrective lenses, which were duly ordered at the shop located conveniently in the Ophthalmologist's clinic (Rs.1,400 for the frame and another Rs.1,800 for the lenses) after going through about a dozen frames (and posing with them for the inspection of my wife and daughter).

The spectacles were picked up today, and at around noon, Indian Standard Time, a new life started for me.

It would be a life where I would need to remember where I kept my reading glasses at all times. It would be a life where I would have to carry them in a case for the risk of cracking their delicate glass lenses. It would be a life where I would look up from my reading and realise that I need to take them off to be able to see the landscape clearly. It would be a life where I would never quickly look down from whatever I was doing to read something out, or to check my phone, or refer to a map, without first reaching for my glasses. It would be a life where there will always be a "Before Glasses" and "After Glasses."

In the last 7-odd hours, I have suddenly aged more than I aged in the last 6 years since I turned 40. I feel as if I am letting go of something precious: the ability to live without a prosthetic, an ability I was so proud of possessing. An ability I took for granted so much so that even when I wasn't judging other bespectacled men younger than I, I actually was, sub-consciously.

I now know how an amputee feels. It is as if a part of me has gone forever, never to return. I am in mourning. It is the same feeling children probably get when their favourite pet or their grandparent passes. That they'll just have to deal with life without what they thought was an indivisible part of it. That they'll never be able to hug or touch or see or converse with someone they thought was forever. It is that sinking feeling one felt at the bottom of one's gut on the last day of school. The one of finality. Of having crossed some kind of a point of no return. And realising how good it was on the other side of that line, which I will not be able to cross back ever again, regardless of how successful, powerful, wealthy, or strong I become.

Am I overreacting? Does this mean I have finally grown up? or grown old? Is this andropause? Am I getting old but refusing to accept it? Will other body parts follow suit? Will other bodily functions? I am worried. Suddenly, I remember the pithy truism, "It isn't death that is scary; it is the painful and slow process of dying." and shudder.

But then, from the day we are born, we are indeed in the process of dying slowly. So, why the fear? Why now? Was I in denial for so long? Or was I so naive as to believe I was immortal? I do not know. In fact, if you were to ask me to even list all the thoughts rushing into my brain right now, I would feel dizzy-headed and nauseated as if I have just got off a roller-coaster. Or it could be just a normal reaction of taking off my new reading glasses after an inordinately long time of wearing them and not realising why the scene is suddenly so blurry and why my eyes are watering. Are my eyes watering? Am I actually crying? No. No. Nooooooo....

OK, that felt good.

On another, more practical note, I hear younger and younger people get reading glasses now. It seems that over 61% of the world's population needs some kind of corrective lenses to read. Given that we are now in the 21st century where cars can drive themselves, rockets can land backwards, and we can argue about whether or not dolphins are people with a random stranger sitting 20,000km away, why have we not yet invented a way to do away with this stupid, awkward, physically inconvenient method of prosthesis?

I mean, come on! Couldn't we have some chip implant, some simple synthetic lens transplant, some ordinary minor surgical procedure that would do away with this clunky solution? Isn't this troubling the geniuses as much (if not more) than that part of the population that is incapable of finding solutions? So, why haven't we?

Any answers? I need them quick. You see, I am dying...as are we all, one body part at a time.