Elephant Seals Teach the Vision of Now

The rain fell steadily outside my bedroom window as I contemplated this month’s column. Finally the words came to me and I leapt from bed, reaching for one of five eyeglasses sitting on my bed stand.

A buddy of mine describes me as her friend “with 20 pairs of glasses who sees things others cannot.”

It is true. I have pairs of glasses everywhere in my house: in my office, in my odds and ends drawer, in my purse, on my table next to my recliner, in pockets, on end tables. Everywhere.

When my near sightedness began to wane a decade ago, I became obsessed with making sure I always had reading glasses nearby. Ending up in a restaurant with no glasses annoyed me, especially when someone had to read the menu to me. So I made sure I carried at least five glasses in my purse. A gal can never be too insightful.

This year the eye doctor said the time had come for “real” glasses, so I received a prescription for progressive lenses, which would change my life, the doctor assured me. The first day I wore them while driving, I did notice new gauges on my dashboard, and I marveled at the brightness of the speedometer. I did not realize I had lost so much over recent months in the far-sighted vision department.

Despite the fact that my eyes are tired after 50 years of doing amazing duty, my dreams and visions remain strong. I listen to my visions with knowingness now. When I have frightful dreams — mine usually involve some person rejecting me — I know the dream attempts to tell me something about my life and fears. I seek the insight it brings me about living my life today, but when I wake I reach for a pair of glasses first.

So this morning when I woke with the deadline looming for my column, the words “vision” and “sight” kept repeating themselves, along with the lyrics from a song, “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.” I raced for the computer, knocking glasses off the nightstand in my attempt to see clearly now.

The new progressive lenses have not become the panacea for all my eyes’ ills. I still use reading glasses while at the computer and when reading for long periods of time. But for watching television and driving and in general around the house, they make life easier because I no longer have to switch between three levels of reading glass strengths.

As I made my bed the other morning, I straightened a new bedspread across the new four-poster bed and wondered if we are ever truly satisfied with life. I love my new house and furniture and in the appreciation of that moment I let creep into my mind the things that dissatisfy me about my new house, such as the backyard that needs major attention and back-breaking work. In that moment, when I let my mind wander away from the task of making the bed, I managed to pull myself back to enjoy the colors of the bedspread and the softness of its fabric.

This summer while visiting northern California with friends, we stopped alongside Highway 1 at a rest stop where elephant seals lay on the beach, jammed side by side. When I looked down on them, laughter bubbled up from deep inside of me, and I took visceral pleasure in those animals that loll about on the beach, oblivious to anything but their own existence. Occasionally they would flop over or lift a flipper and bark.

That vision made me extremely happy for no reason except with those seals I live in the moment of pure unadulterated joy. There is no past, there is no future and nothing else matters but lying on that beach and lolling in the sand.

I see what I can with my myriad of glasses, and when I need reminding that it is the moment that matters, I pick up the photo on my dresser of two elephant seals from that day at the beach, and I once again laugh because all that matters exists right there in front of me, and I do not need glasses to see that vision. I only need imagination.

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