Take A New Look at Things

As the end of the year approaches, I go through a time-honored ritual: getting all my medical stuff out of the way before the new year and deductible kick in. So yes, I have all kinds of doctor appointments to entertain me through these last days of December, including my eye check-up. Frankly, I probably didn't need it - my sight is fairly stable and I could've just renewed my contacts prescription. However, I was getting all that stuff out of the way, so why not my eyes as well?

Here's the fun part. After spending one day in a very blurry, dilated-eyes kind of place, I got to try on my new contacts. Wow! I didn't quite realize how sharp and crisp the edges of things were until the new pair went in. Now, it's like a whole new world has opened up before me. Tree branches actually have individual shape and texture, as opposed to being just the basic idea of a tree off in the distance without much definition. And clouds - well, let me tell you about clouds. It turns out they are quite detailed if you have a good prescription (or normal eyes). You just need to look at them closely.

Of course, this is where things turn toward writing. Any writer has their favorite thing to write about, their special stories they love to tell. My friends and I have a whole package of them: The soup-or-salad/Super Salad incident is one of my faves, as is the miscalculating of a tip at Red Lobster, mistaken identity at the pool hall, and any story about one of my epic car accidents. These stories stood the test of time, and they never fail to amuse. However, every now and then, I dig one out of the memory pit and give it a fresh look. Sometimes I see something new.  

I recently spent some time exploring one of those car accidents I mentioned. I have been in some bad ones, but I try not to live in the past and dwell on the stupidity of my actions when I was eighteen. After all, it's not like I can change anything, right? Well, as it turns out, when I revisited one of those stories, four decades later, I found it oddly discomforting. I even felt edgy, as if I was disturbing some evil spirits. This was the moment I realized that all my storytelling about that moment might have blurred out some of the details, washed out some of the facts, and just left the amusing story of a stupid teenager flipping a 1976 AMC Pacer. 

Looking back on that night with fresh eyes, the writer in me sensed the fear I felt that night. My personal terror of the crash dissociated me from the entire situation, and I "remembered" it mostly in a third-person view. Now that I could look at it again, it wasn't a very funny story at all. It was traumatizing. It left me in a state of shock. The injuries weren't horrible, but in a different sense, I carried the damage of that accident with me for years, just never looking at it with any clarity of vision. The gift of time, emotional distance, and personal healing let me face up to it eventually, but I realized there was an entirely different story that I now had to confront.

Time is a weird thing. Its passing can change things in our memory, and the world can seem very different - though it never actually changes. So, sometimes, give yourself a chance to look at things with fresh eyes, without the biases and beliefs you might've been dragging around for decades. With a new look, you might see things you've totally overlooked.