Start seeing

In two weeks, I am up for new pair of eye glasses.

But today, upon first examination, the eye care doctor revealed what was obvious to her, but not to me: I have had a minor stroke (vein # 7), which pulled my left eye up

and if I were able to ask someone to watch me while I am asleep, he/she would see that it’s not completely shut.

Hence, the dried eye and the need for artificial tears (contact lenses for the past thirty years).

I could have died five years ago while fainted and fell down.

Now, reflecting and meditating on that near-death experience, I realize I have not focused while living on borrow time.

Steve Jobs was known to pay attention to how an I-phone was packaged and shipped. User’s experience was important to him just as the original design itself. The Devil is in the details.

Yet, all along, he had known about the cancer that was eating him up.

Start seeing!

Start making choices!

Start focusing .

Mozart Requiem, working backward from your visualized funeral.

That face, those fingers, the lips and those eyes.

We all die, not being able to see our own faces (only their reflections).

I want to start my memorial museum: stuff I wrote, things I said, people I hurt and loved, people who hurt me and loved me. (In “the Museum of Innocence”, our protagonist even collected what his lover would call trash, to be displayed in his personal museum. He predicted that in the future, museums will get to be very personal, more intimate than boutique ones.)

Circumstances I could have acted more bravely and opportunities I could have had a better jump on.

Emptying out my desk, emptying out my shell. Shed the pretense and nearsightedness.

This is me.

This is how I see you.

Unfiltered and with suspense of disbelief.

I see your inner and hidden beauty. Your perpetual struggle and sabotage.

We are all injured creatures, by life, and subliminally by death.

I know I have.

Have you?

Death reaches back with its long arms, its odious toxicity and sure-handed destruction.

Death separates us, unless we all end at once in a calamity.

Because of the fear of Death we became overly self-protective.

We put up a shell, a  shield. We want to buy ourselves some time.

We want to live in denial like Twin Towers’ jumpers buying a few more seconds.

I couldn’t for the life of me understand what happened to me until today.

It was a wake-up call. I felt lucky. I still have another shot at life.

I want to add to my new eye prescription an added dimension, a new context, a different angle and a zoom-out capability. I want to feel the bond of common humanity i.e. struggle to get home in the smog, to put food on the table and to put the children to bed. I want to  see the child’s future and possibilities.

Try it yourself this very day. Take public transportation for a change, and observe. People-watching. Start seeing.