Sedated by Versed, my left eye anesthetized, I waited in the operating room. In moments, Dr. Bruce Cohen, ophthalmologist with Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, MO, began removing the cataract that had clouded my vision for months. All the while, two rectangles of varying sizes morphed into brilliant reds, oranges, greens, golds, yellows, lavenders; then sucked into a sea of blue, only to reemerge with greater vibrancy. Later I learned that phaco emulsification (high frequency sound waves) had produced this lightshow.

Convalescence from this surgery has evoked deep thoughts: how the sightless manage in a dark world; how the vision-impaired handle impatience, reading, accidents. My light-sensitivity and blurriness lasted a few days, only to be followed by the imbalance between my healing eye and the other one. Drops administered three times daily promote healing; one of them, the anti-inflammatory Ketorolac, stings to my toes.

But on a deeper level, I liken denial and rationalization to this milky condition of the lens obstructing passage of light into the eye, an imperceptible process, sometimes taking years. In a parallel sense, these defense mechanisms distort inner vision: judgment becomes impaired; thinking, skewed; and imagination, banal. If this aberration is not addressed, dishonesty eclipses the soul into total darkness. And within this darkness lurks the Evil One and its passion to suck souls into eternal death.

Thus, the urgency of the Psychic Surgeon to evacuate all traces of filmy overlays from our souls, to expose them to the Light, exceedingly more dazzling than the lightshow I experienced in the operating room.

In time, with corrective lenses, I will see again.

 


photo credit: loco’s photos via photo pin cc