99. Tunnel Vision

Urban Train Station, Río Piedras, Puerto Rico ©2016 Ronald C. Flores-Gunkle

If you expected a Justin Timberlake song or an online vintage clothing store, or a review of one of the mediocre “Tunnel Vision” movies, I’m about to disappoint you. I have tunnel vision, the real kind, the medical kind, as a result of glaucoma.

With my left eye, I can see about 80% of the center area perfectly. The edges, however, are a blur. Everything I see through my right eye is a blur, except a tiny central portion — maybe 8% — when I can find it. The vision loss is permanent, but it is not progressive. My ophthalmologist — an optimist of sorts — said I will be dead long before I will be blind.

It is a minor annoyance. I don’t drive since I can’t judge distances well. My wife likes to drive, so that’s no problem. I sometimes spill things or knock over things that are outside my field of clear vision, but it is becoming infrequent as we adapt and if it happens, we laugh it off.

I’m retired, so there is no job to affect. It doesn't interfere with my writing, painting or gardening at all. I find it harder to read books but the larger print option on my Kindle solves that problem. If it gets me down a little from time to time, I have an antidepressant: I think of Helen Keller.

Then there is that other, more common, kind of tunnel vision, the one when someone has a very limited point of view, is narrow-minded. I have been battling that affliction all my life. I tend to be an iconoclast, am definitely a skeptic, reject dogma, and challenge assumptions.

I have my own answers to the great questions. I think I know the meaning of life, who I am, why I am here, the difference between right and wrong, what happens after death, if I have a soul and if there is a god, if my life is destiny, fate or coincidence, the nature of philosophy. You know, The small stuff.

My struggle is to accept the answers of others; the great static that fills the minds and hearts of the people I know and love, and just about everyone else on earth. The task is to accept that their answers are as valid as mine.

This type of tunnel vision is reversible: sight (and insight) can be restored. I hope to travel all the way through this tunnel and emerge into the blinding light of understanding and tolerance.

I hope to become this kind of blind long before I am dead.

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