It’s Christmas week. Icicle lights dangle in the window. Electric candles glow on the sill. Multi-coloured bulbs twinkle from the Christmas tree. I sink into the couch. Take off my glasses. And watch it all go out of focus.
I am near-sighted. Very near-sighted. Most of the time I wear contact lenses but not, of course, to bed, so when I first wake in the morning my world is a blur until I grab my glasses from the top of the bureau. My mother, who is also near-sighted but to a lesser degree, will walk around for a while without her glasses when she first gets up. I can’t do that. I need for things to be in focus.
Except, a few years ago I discovered that blur can be beautiful. I happened to take off my glasses to clean them and glanced up at the lit Christmas tree. And was transfixed. The individual bulbs lost their clearly defined borders and became radiating rainbow starbursts. The lights in the window were transformed into shimmering golden orbs.
It brings to mind getting into my car one fall day and looking through the rain-splattered windshield. In the moment before turning on the windshield wipers I realized the view looked like a beautiful abstract painting filled with ripples and swirls. I had to take a photo before wiping the image away.
We spend so much of our time trying to focus. Especially at this time of year with its endless lists of tasks. Our lives become sharp and pointed. And that’s okay. It’s how we get from A to B. But sometimes we need to witness the magic that happens when we let the edges blur.
Lana