Blinded

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.” ~Aldous Huxley, English writer, humanist, pacifist (1894-1963)

I sat in the late afternoon shade of our patio staring at the oleander in the corner of our back yard. Though it was dead and void of greenery it was captivating. The intricacy, texture, complexity and even the relatively dull colors had captured me. Teresa waited patiently for me to return my attention to the conversation we had been having over our evening meal. Between the anesthetic fog, and the results of the surgery, I had been distracted most of the day; staring at things for prolonged periods.

At 7:30 that morning I had been wheeled into a small surgical theater. Draped, drugged and at the mercy of the gowned specialists swirling around me in a precise ballet of preparation. They had marked an ‘R’ over my right eye so the doctor knew which one to repair. I giggled to myself wondering if they had marked my shoes in a similar fashion.

“Are you comfortable” the lady with the shower cap asked. “Uh huh” I managed to respond. In what seemed like moments I heard a disembodied voice, “It looks good” and something like drapery was pulled from around my face. The room I had entered feet first I was now exiting head first. Another shower cap & gown bedecked person was helping me sit up and offering me water or coffee. No contest there: “Coffee please.” I needed to wake up.

During my brief period of “twilight sleep” the surgeon had used a laser to make a tiny incision in my right eye. My existing lens, replete with a large ripe cataract, was obliterated using ultrasonic vibrations then vacuumed away. A new artificial lens was slipped into place through the same incision and seated where the old one had been. The result? I now had 20/20 vision, uncorrected (which in and of itself is an oxymoron).

After several years of dimming sight and gradually increasing difficulty with everything requiring my vision I now saw the world anew; literally through a different set of eyes. And so I stared at the oleander, at everything; reconnecting with what I had missed.

“You never know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone” (Bob Dylan’s “Big Yellow Taxi”). We often take things, like our sight or our health, for granted, simply because they are always there. It is, therefore, scarcity, not abundance which makes us aware of and grateful for the many gifts we are given each day. When the gifts we receive from God become expected however, we no longer perceive them as gifts and in turn cease to be grateful for them.

Most of us wake each morning expecting to have a roof over our heads, food on the table, fresh water on tap, a job to go to and a car to get us there. As our wealth and possessions grow so do our expectations and our gratitude, in turn, diminishes. Have you ever said to someone, “I need a new car” or “a new television” or “a new laptop”? But do we really “need” it or is it our expectations talking? We can easily become a kind of possession junky, requiring more and more stuff to satiate our self.

Some years ago Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis made a very generous financial gift to a charity. When she presented the check she remarked offhandedly, “I wish I could give you more, but I’m not that rich.” Jackie Onassis? “Not that rich???” Yet, in her frame of reference, she was not that rich simple because her expectations of what were necessities were so high. Expectations become entitlements and blind us to God’s gifts.

This, in some ways, explains why the poor sometimes seem to be more grateful than the rich. Logically more gifts should generate more gratitude, but it actually operates in the reverse: the more scarcity the greater the gratitude.

One way to prevent being anesthetized by our possessions is to do “charity work”. This does not mean writing more checks, rather it means donating more time, volunteering. Volunteerism is a simple way of reconnecting ourselves with scarcity; with need. It is a way for us to experience poverty, illness, homelessness, unemployment, aging, even death on a first hand basis and often without risk. It gives us the opportunity to see reality through the eyes of another. It resets our expectations to more reasonable levels and allows us to be grateful again.

Though I had experienced blindness, thanks to modern technology I was never really in danger of being blind, and yet I have a renewed joy in being sighted. It is common for people who do a lot of volunteer work to remark, “I get more out of it than I put into it.” This comes, not only from the joy of helping others, but from the recognition of the many gifts we have and a renewed gratitude for having received them. If we are to avoid being blinded by our many gifts we must look through the eyes of those who are deprived of them.

Dear God, remind me constantly to be grateful for everything which I have.

“We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.” ~Cynthia Ozick, American short story writer, novelist, essayist (b1928)

© 2010 James E. Carper. All rights reserved.
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