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The other morning, I went into the bathroom to put in my contacts. I happened to be in the middle of a disagreement with my wife, so I may have been muttering under my breath a bit. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being boiling hot, I’d say I was at about a 4. It definitely was taking up space in my brain, though, and that led to some hilarity in front of the bathroom mirror.
I put in my right contact, then I went to put in my left contact and it… wasn’t in the case. Where did it go? I dug my finger into the case over and over again, with no luck. I looked all over the sink and the ground, then checked both places again. I also was struggling with my vision because with one contact in and one not in, I always have a warped sense of vision as I look around.
It was a frustrating five minutes or so until I had a bizarre realization—the reason my sight was so off wasn’t because I had one eye with a contact in it and one eye without a contact in it. The problem was, I had one eye with no contact in it and one eye with TWO contacts in there. So one eyeball had my normal bad vision and one eyeball basically had the Hubble telescope in there.
It turns out that in my haze of resentment—over a topic that I don’t even remember, to be honest—I had pulled both contacts out and distractedly placed them both in the same eye. I’ve been wearing contacts for more than 30 years, and that has never happened before. Perhaps I was more like a 7 out of 10 on the boiling hot scale?
I had a good chuckle and then removed the second contact from my eye. Almost immediately my vision improved because I had one contact at 20/20 and one at about 40/60 without a contact in. Then I put the other one in, and voila, I had good vision in both eyes.
I walked out of the bathroom thinking about perspective—literally and figuratively. The literal perspective was just that I could freaking see rather than having one binocular eye. The figurative perspective was that it reminded me that my brain can often put lenses over minor things and make them big. Or take a clear picture and make it very, very blurry. Some days my perspective is like an eyeball with no contact in—a little fuzzy, just out of proper view. Some days my perspective is like an eyeball with two contacts in it—supersized in an unhealthy way, blowing up a minor issue into something that seems much larger and daunting.
And some days I have the correct contact in both eyes and I can see fine, with nothing out of whack. The best way for me to get to that place is a strong sober program—meetings, phone calls, literature work, service, gratitude lists, making amends… all of the things. For other people, there are probably other ways to get yourself to have the right perspective—walks, prayers, meditations, going for a drive, making meals for the homeless, etc. But the broader point is, we probably all could use the perspective of two contacts in two eyes, rather than one or zero contacts in. And two contacts in one eye is definitely a really shitty idea.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
Friday night at the convention, two police officers watched as thousands of alcoholics streamed toward the stadium, singing, laughing, and shouting.
“Isn’t AA marvelous?” exclaimed the first officer. “Here are all these alcoholics, and not one of them is drinking!”
“Yes” replied the second, eyeing the crowd a little nervously. “Let’s just hope it keeps working until Sunday.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, October 2000, Anonymous from Minneapolis, Minnesota)
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