Better Vision part 2

For those of you reading this, it means you're one of the lucky ones-- not blind and not frozen dead from movember. And as a celebration, here's some eye candy:

Tom Sellick fractal-- self similarity

It's not that I support prostate cancer, but this is as far as my mustache is allowed to go.

But just because you can see doesn't mean you have good vision. You may have good eyesight, but vision is something beyond eyes. For the last year I've been working hard at improving both of mine-- eyesight and vision. Unfortunately this past month has been particularly rough on my eyes and vision. If you've ever experienced a winter in Midwest, then you know how my soul feels come winter and daylight savings' darkness-- motivational skills be lacking. It's dark. It's hard to see past the cold. Vision becomes myopic.

I had my ass served to me hard this week when I went in to see Dr. Powers, my optometrist. His office is inside the left testicle of Satan himself-- Walmart. I know, I know, I'm so ashamed. But at least I know him by name and he knows mine. My glasses have gotten all scratched up and mangled from visits to construction sites. So, I thought the time was right to get examined for new hardware.

My brilliant plan was to get the prescription from Walmart and then, just to piss-off "the man", order my frames online for like $10. (If you know a local fair trade free range organic lens grinder, I'd love their card). The bad news is that Dr. Powers told me my astygmatism has gotten worse. That means that my eyesballs are morphing from European futbols to American footballs. I said, "Doc! This can't be, I've been trying to be really good to my eyes."

I felt like I got the wind knocked out of me. You see, I was totally convinced by the book I read last year, that it was possible to cure my sight and improve my vision through a variety of physical, mental, attitudinal exercises and mega-nutrition. Honestly, I didn't really devote myself to my vision exercises, but I still didn't expect to be moving backwards. I was damn good about my nutrition (probably because it was the closest thing I could get to a delicious magic pill). 

I wasn't quite sure how much enbrightenment I could expect from a man of the ivory tower inside the big box testicle, but I decided to put it out there, "Hey Doc, yunno, I read this book a year ago about how to improve your eyesight naturally...do you think there's anything to that?" I really laid my soul out to bare...and if Dr. Powers would have answered differently, I probably would have renounced my entire belief in the power of the plasticity of the mind...or my mind anyway.

Luckily for the human race, Dr. Powers had this to say, "That's funny you ask. I get asked that question about two or three times a year. For most of my patience, if I told them their vision would get better if they did these five or six things, they'd go home and do nothing about it. I do believe it can be done. We all fall into bad habits that can make our eye sight worse. I have a colleague who was getting great results from it himself. It's actually a hundred year old method, called the [some name I can't remember]." 

The fact that this exchange happened in Walmart was enough to restore my faith in humanity. And let's not forget our faith in the effect of the placebo. Countless studies are showing that not only do placebos work, but the more powerful the placebo, the more effective the results. For instance, a syringe-administered placebo is more powerful than a pill placebo. And a higher dosage of placebo is more effective than a lesser dosage.

Not that eye exercises and vision meditations are purely placebo, but I have to wonder, does my head ache go away because I take an asprin or because I made a decision to take an asprin? Probably both.

So, as Lady Gaga would say, "Scheiße be mine."