I Can See Clearly Now, My Contact Prescription's Been Upped Again

Hello Everyone,

I usually change my contacts on the 22nd of each month. This most recent time, I accidentally put in an extra pair leftover from my previous prescription which I’d had updated in December. These lenses were noticeably weaker than the ones I had been wearing for the past month. I don’t know which was more worrying: the thought that for much of 2009, I had been functioning relatively well with such a poor match for my eyes (please don’t tell the Department of Licensing!) or that in such a short time, I had forgotten how much more clearly I am now seeing.

For those of you who don’t wear contacts, corrective lens prescriptions are measured in diopters which tell the amount of correction the lens must provide to bring your vision to approximately 20/20. My prescription usually needs a bit of strengthening each year, and this year was no different. I went from -4.5 to -5.25 in the right eye and -4.0 to -4.75 in the left. It might not seem like .75 would make that much of a difference, but when I went back to the old ones, everything seemed off. My balance wasn’t right and I was less alert. I couldn’t read signs easily and my visual attention span was shorter. Simply put, my vision had lost its edge. I’ve heard two sayings which on the surface sound contradictory but which I don’t think actually are: “God dwells in the details,” and “The devil’s in the details.” Details could be good or bad, but they are the worst of what is lost when your prescription goes down .75 of a diopter.

Ever since ninth grade, when I learned about Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, I have been fascinated with the notion that there could be a “more real” reality underpinning our experience. Contacts can be a bit of a bother especially while swimming or on camping trips, but I am grateful that I have a daily physical reminder that what my eyes show me isn’t all there is.

Last week, one of my Muslim friends here invited me to attend the mosque he goes to each Friday. I haven’t gone yet, but I will. Perhaps it was because of this invitation that I was all the more angered and disheartened to read that evening of the violence occurring in Nigeria between Christians and Muslims. The grownup half of me understands that grownup conflict is always complicated: poverty, history, politics and culture are probably at least as responsible as religion for the animosity between the two groups. But the child half of me couldn’t help blurt out a child solution: “If I can be friends with Daoud or Fatimah or Yamen, why can’t other Christians and Muslims be friends?” There are no doctors for this kind of blindness. How I wish we could measure a person’s internal nearsightedness and then based on a set of preestablished formulae, attach the necessary corrective lens.

I came across a Frederick Buechner quote the other day that seemed apropos: “Religion and unreligion are both sinful to the degree that they widen the gap between you and the people who don’t share your views.” In other words, when Muslims and Christians (or anyone, for that matter) fight each other, they abandon the very creeds they claim to fight for, creeds which actually offer a new prescription, a way to see beyond the murky shadows dancing on a cave wall. True religion, at its best, is a lens which allows us a bit more vision than we would have had if left to our own defenses. Sight can lead to curiosity about other people which in turn can lead to compassion and even love.

I don’t know if there are any 20/20 people; we are all myopic to a degree, and we can’t help it. But few if any people are completely blind either, and if we keep our eyes open, there is always something to see, limited though the sight might be. The thing is, I came across that Buechner quote while I had my old lenses in.

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

ps: As a reminder, I have created a weblog where I will be posting these weekly letters. It is at the following link: http://www.mouseinthesouth.blogspot.com/. After next week’s letter, I will continue to send these as emails only if you have asked me to remain on the email list, so if you would like to continue reading these as emails, please let me know if you haven’t already. Thank you to those of you who have responded.

Please Let Me Know if You Would Like to Continue Receiving These Letters in Email Form

Hello Everyone,


Believe it or not, it has been a year since I started writing these weekly emails. I enjoy writing them because they help me write on a regular basis and they help me observe my life more carefully. However, I wanted to take this chance to update the format that they take. Like you, I get many emails each week and I don’t want to be adding to already cluttered inboxes. I have therefore decided to post these letters online on a web log (I am not calling it a blog because I think it’s a disgusting-sounding word). Some of you, however, may be like me and don’t remember to check web logs often, so I will continue to send the letters as emails to those of you who would prefer this. Please let me know if you would like to continue receiving these letters as emails. If you would rather read them on the web log, there is no need to respond -- feel free to check it at your own pace at http://mouseinthesouth.blogspot.com/.


For the next several weeks, I will send both an email and update the web log. As always, let me know if anyone you know would like to be added to the address list, or feel free to pass on the link to the web log. Most years are pretty full when you sit down and think about what has actually happened during them, but this last one was a real doozy for me. I went on 17 trips to one fifth of the states in the country. I went on ten long car trips, five buses and over 40 planes. This time last year, I had no hair on my head; now I have over three inches. I began both of my graduate programs and the people I met this year have first names that represent every letter of the alphabet except U and X (which is funny considering that the year before, those were two of the more popular letters for first names).


This has been a year of firsts for me, both exciting and less so: I got my first full time job and took out my first student loans. I got a cell phone (and then was knocked down by the veritable wave of approbation) and converted from a PC to a Mac. Perhaps to counter this sudden surge in technology, 2009 has seen my first complete paintings in mud.


Thank you for reading and for following the rather windy course of my last year. It looks like there are more adventures to come: I will be spending my spring term in a small town in France and then I will be heading to South Africa with my parents and brother to visit friends and family. I promise to provide updates on any salient, amusing or bizarre stories that come up.


I’ll leave you with my favorite anecdote since I have been back at school. I was reading my picture book, “When You’re An Explorer,” to some first graders at a local elementary school for career day. I got to a line that usually earns a few chuckles or at least some good ew!’s: “When an explorer gets a cold, she sometimes has to blow her nose in her socks.” One little boy raised his hand and said in all seriousness, “My grandma does that!” It’s been a long time since I’ve struggled so hard to keep a straight face.


Have a good week, and don’t forget to let me know if you would like to stay on the email list! Sarah/Mouse