Gazing at Infinity

Like so many people, I suffered from the affliction of myopia in my youth. I refused to wear my glasses and walked around blind until my parents relented and let me get contact lenses in junior high. A few years ago I gave myself a very special birthday present: LASIK surgery. And to say it changed my outlook on life is an understatement.

Immediately after the surgery, and for about two weeks thereafter, I did not enjoy reading. It was the first time I remember having suffered this affliction since having learned to read, and it led to me spending a lot of time gazing at infinity. At that time I worked in a windowless basement, so every chance I got, I would find a window and gaze out of it. This got me to thinking about how man was made to gaze at infinity. While I have long since gone back to my love of reading, I find that many of my happiest memories were those times when I spent hours gazing at infinity, like when T and I just sat on Deck 10 of the cruise ship and watched the horizon, or when we drove along the northern edge of the state of New York. The jobs I have been most content at were ones where I had a window. (A BIG part of the reason I took my current job!!) And I tend to believe I am not alone in this, that we all grow depressed if the furthest we can see in front of us for hours and months and years on end is our cubicle wall ten feet away. No wonder so many people are gloomy! I have never heard anyone say that the problem is a lack of ability to gaze at infinity, but studying this problem would certainly make a wonderful grant proposal!

I will be looking into infinity quite a bit more in the future, since I have been - don't laugh - asked to participate in a triathlon. (OK, go ahead and laugh - I did!) This is by no means the Iron Man or anything of that caliber, and the several hundred yards of swimming and ten miles of biking don't frighten me at all, but those three miles of running sure do! I'm not sure if I could run that far if something were chasing me! But I have six months to work up to it, and those six months should involve lots of gazing far into the distance while attempting to run at least a few feet before calling it quits. At least, as soon as the temperature gets into the positive numbers Fahrenheit...

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