I recently bought a new pair of eyeglasses, and found in this an area for focus and significant impact in our lives.
Many of us spend considerable time and angst choosing eyeglass frames, as this frame will become part of how we are seen by others. We may ask: “Are these a good fit in shape or size or color with my face?” or “Do these lenses make me look more or less intelligent?” or “Do I look old or out of touch with today’s fashion trends?” I too obsessed, more than I like to admit about choosing the right frame, even reaching out to friends and family in video chats to gather opinions. It felt silly and yet I was drawn to get the approval of others whose aesthetic sense I value.
It had been quite a while since I bought new glasses. My prescription had changed and I was never happy with the vision correction of my 3 year old pair. I hoped for a better result this time around, and constrained my choice to be “practical”. I have astigmatism, have worn glasses since childhood and now have gray hair. Therefore, I need vision correction at all distances. In such a case, most optometrists recommend progressive lenses, which can provide sharp focus at any distance, from near to far, allowing for reading, using a computer, and seeing far away objects all with the same pair of glasses. For a bit more money, I added in the auto darkening photo-gray feature for increased comfort in bright sunlight. I would have one pair of glasses for all distances and all conditions.
One week later I received my new glasses and …… WOW! …… Wherever I set my gaze, what I saw was wonderfully sharp. I looked at the optician’s face and saw the textures of their skin. I looked at one of the retail displays nearby and it appeared sharper than I expected. These glasses were good. They got the prescription right this time. This was nice! I had a better reading distance focus as well, and when I looked at a sign 2 feet away and it was super sharp; the computer vision would be good too. I was happy……until I wasn’t.
Soon, I realized the zones of crisp focus were very limited to the object at the center of my gaze. A little bit to the right or left of center the images were blurry, and this was noticeably true in all of the focal zones, far, medium and near. I had known that this is the reality of progressive lenses and yet at this moment, I was dismayed. We had a vacation planned beginning in a few days, during which I was looking forward to enjoying some of the most beautiful nature vista anywhere in the world and I wanted to take it all in with broad in-focus vision. I was suddenly disappointed in my choice of glasses…….
I knew that anything off center right, left, up or down would not be in sharp focus. I wanted to see it all clearly. Why had I not used the knowledge I had in my eyeglass selection process?
As an ergonomist, I frequently help people with their computer workstations and have found time and time again that people who have progressive lenses tend to have neck pain and upper back pain when they spend long hours working on the computer. The small zone of focus drives constrained neck postures to direct the gaze in the right direction to the spot on the screen that one wishes to see. The zone of sharp focus tends to be about 6” in diameter. When helping people with progressive lenses, which tends to be almost everyone with gray hair, I first recommend that they obtain single vision, computer distance glasses. The feedback I receive from clients who follow this recommendation is universally positive. They report huge improvements in their comfort and easy working at the computer. It take much less muscular exertion to shift the eyes than the head and eyes can focus a bit off center and remain in a comfort zone.
Personally, I keep a pair of computer glasses in my computer bag and another next to my computer workstation at home. I also have a pair of reading glasses by my bedside which I toss into my bag when I travel if I am also taking a book to read. I’ve known of the small focus zone of progressive lenses for years and yet generally have worn progressive lenses, when out and about, for my normal everyday activity because of course they’re practical.
But now ….. a very special vacation was coming and I wanted to see all the beautiful places, all at once with only a slight shift of my eyes. I didn’t want to move my head right and left up and down to see the gorgeous landscapes we planned to visit. I wanted to be able to let my eyes take it all in.
Was it too late to make a change? I didn’t have 1-2 weeks for delivery. What about the places that offer overnight delivery? I sat down at the computer and began searching. This time I didn’t care if I chose a frame that was optimally complimentary to my appearance. I would make this decision. based primarily on the the vision correction, in a large field of view.
Within 90 minutes I had selected a vendor, chosen a frame and ordered, by overnight delivery, a pair of single vision, distance vision lenses. I selected a frame of similar shape to the ones I had recently bought but a bit bigger. If I was to have clear focus across the entire lens, I may as well get a big lens and thus a bigger field of view.
I received my newest glasses in time for our vacation and enjoyed the wide, tall and gorgeous views more than I’ve been able to, in recent years. I am enjoying the sharp vision across a big area by merely moving my eyes to look at different things without needing to move my head.
With the sharp focus also comes an increased feeling of presence in my surroundings. The wide field of view allows a mindful presence more elusive when one needs to move their head to shift focus.
I am even appreciating that I didn’t get the photo gray lenses, as now I see the real brightness of my world, and my eyes are doing just fine making the adjustments. If at some point I get bothered by the brightness, I have overglass type sunglasses I can use. (The vendor would have charged me $200 extra for the photo gray, more than doubling the cost of the glasses. As it happened, I paid about half the price I had just paid for the progressive lenses.)
Wearing my new glasses after returning from our travel adventure, I drove along a familiar road and found that my awareness of the signs and other things alongside the road was much greater than it had been in the past. This raises an interesting system issue of how much of the world around us being in focus, or not, may affect us at a deep level in our awareness of the world we inhabit. How does the size of our zone of focus, that progressive lenses so significantly constrain, limit our feeling of presence in our world? How does this constraint impact our awareness of things around us, but outside of the center of our field of view? And might this also have a carry-on mindset effect in our awareness of others’ perspectives who are slightly to the right or left of our primary view?
Curious minds will wonder.
