6 ms·

I think this is a unique view, but I've come to appreciate nearsightedness. Partially because I like having the ability to soften the external world by removing

I think this is a unique view, but I've come to appreciate nearsightedness. Partially because I like having the ability to soften the external world by removing my glasses (like wrapping myself in a warm fuzzy blanket), but even more so because it grants me the ability to see things near me in sharper focus than someone with 20/20 vision. I can put on contacts or glasses to see something at a distance just as clearly as someone with naturally perfect vision, but someone with 20/20 vision would strain to view something as close to their nose as I comfortably can. (Great for reading!) I fully admit that this perspective is borne out of my attempt to find the good in a conventionally undesirable situation. But having found it, would I trade it? I don't think I would...

ianai 8y ago
I tell people I could walk through a room of naked people and not see anything private.
enobrev 8y ago
This is the _one_ thing I miss about getting my eyesight fixed. Within a month of getting laser surgery, it was so natural that I'd essentially forgotten the experience of glasses and contacts, as though I'd never experienced the previous 20 years with them. One of my very favorite things to do before then was sit in Central Park, or at the Diversey Rocks in Chicago, or anywhere with lots of color, remove my glasses, and just enjoy the blur of it all. It was very calming. An escape from all the details around me, which immediately translated to an inner calm. I still prefer my perfect vision, and I paid a lot more than I could afford when I had it done to make sure it was done well. But I do very much miss that old shortcut to a quick and simple calm.
- freddie_mercury 8y ago
  Why not just buy some glasses that blur up your vision? And then go put them on in Central Park?
  - chrfrasco 8y ago
    make sure they're rose-tinted too
  - placeholderNam 8y ago
    As a glasses-wearer who understands the parent commenter: the all-encompassing vision granted by taking off the glasses (which cover ~60% of our regular view) is what makes for the wholesome, nice feeling OP is talking about.
- ars 8y ago
  You could force your eyes to blur and achieve the same effect. It's easier to do if you are tired, if you've never done it before. Crossing your eyes slightly also helps (then hold the blurry focus and uncross them).
  - dandelany 8y ago
    The continuous effort required to force blurring pretty much negates the calming effect, I think.
- Sharlin 8y ago
  You can train your eye muscles to focus at whatever distance without needing something to fixate on. This allows you to blur your vision at will simply by focusing close.
  - SomeHacker44 8y ago
    Only until presbyopia sets in, starting in your 40s and completing in the early 50s (usually).
dbtqgoat 8y ago
I do the same when I feel disillusioned with superficial beauty. Really pretentious, I know. Either way, it feels good to reduce people to blobs every once and a while. I sometimes get too distracted by looks, so being able to turn that off is nice.
titzer 8y ago
As a person who recently wore contacts every day until dry eyes and an injury forced me to switch back to glasses, I have almost entirely the opposite experience. It bothers me to wear glasses again. My prescription is quite strong, so it creates a pretty significant distortion, stronger towards the edges of the lenses. It's hard to do sports, as I now have a background fear about losing/breaking them, and the distortion messes with my hand/eye coordination. I had an episode skiing where I actually got nauseous from disorientation. As a result I do far less sports and that leads to other things. Ultimately, it has kind of screwed up my sense of scale of things, too, because the glasses make everything appear a bit smaller. When I take off my glasses the distortion goes away, of course, but I can't read street signs, see people's expressions, watch movies, and other things. Watching an incredible sunset or mountain scene with my own eyes...it's like looking at a 200x100 pixel image Gaussian blurred to fill the whole field of view. I might agree with you if my prescription is less, but TBH I wish I could get rid of these damn spectacles. On the other hand, it did teach me a bit about philosophy. E.g. now I realize that to see the world "clearly" I require lenses, I just never noticed before. All of my perception is actually through lenses, not just my eyes. Touch, taste, smell, feeling, all distorted by my senses. And it feeds into my mind, the biggest, most distorted lens of all :)
- dilap 8y ago
  not a candidate for lasik?
  - titzer 8y ago
    No, given that my eyes are already so dry, and this plus contacts led to me injuring my corneas on more than one occasion, one of which meant I spent ~2 weeks in a dark room, essentially blind. So doctors recommend I do not do Lasik. :(
    - tormeh 8y ago
      What about Lasek? Generally has less complications and less invasive, but takes more time to heal.
wlll 8y ago
I have the same situation. When I take my glasses off and move stuff close to my eyes (really close, like around ~4cm) it's like looking through a microscope.
- wccrawford 8y ago
  I wrote a huge comment in reply to someone else, but I had this "superpower", too, and wasn't told that I'd lose it after having my vision corrected. I miss it.
Shikadi 8y ago
I don't think near sightedness means better than 20/20 up close...
- teh_klev 8y ago
  Personal anecdote...depends on your age. I'm near sighted (blind as a bat since my teens) and up until I was ~45'ish still had perfect 20/20 near sight vision. Up close I could read the tiniest of print and perform tasks and repairs on very small assemblies (I'm talking sub-millimetre PCB work and modelling). As I've gotten older this has gotten harder and these sorts of tasks now demand the use of a magnifying glass. This could probably be corrected with the use of varifocal lenses but for now I get on fine with a magnifier. Apropos the Lasik treatment, in my early 20's vanity got the better of me and I wore contact lenses for a time. There were also practicality reasons because I'm a biker and ruined several pairs of glasses trying to stuff the legs into my helmet. Anyway, I contracted an eye infection which over the period of a month affected both eyes and could have resulted in loss of sight in one eye. The doc reckoned I'd picked this up from the lenses despite me being totally anal about keeping them clean. I never wore contacts again. Despite the annoyance sometimes of having to wear eyeglasses, my eyesight even with its less than perfect capabilities, is too valuable a sense to lose. Despite all the Lasik success stories it bothered me enough that I might just be that unlucky sod it doesn't work on and could end up worse just for the sake of convenience and vanity.
- AngryData 8y ago
  It depends on the cause but if the only thing wrong is your eyes are focused to closely, then you will have better vision up close because you have better magnification from the shorter focused lens.
ataturk 8y ago
Many times my glasses have prevented debris from hitting me in the eye. I wear them for the safety aspect alone! Lasik always seemed risky to me--it's not reversible and if better technology comes along I would be out of luck. I also don't mind being nearsighted that much. It's a handicap at times, but not that big of a deal.
nomocrypto 8y ago
Heh, I do this too. It’s great after I’ve been staring at a screen for hours, although I also take my glasses off when using a computer because I really only need them For distance. I definitely feel like it helps my eyes relax a bit more to have my glasses off.
amorphous 8y ago
You are under 40 I assume? That's not gonna last forever
- pps43 8y ago
  Nearsightedness does not go away after 40 (presbiopia does not cancel out myopia).
  - amorphous 8y ago
    I meant "viewing something as close to my nose as I comfortably can" won't last long.
    - pps43 8y ago
      People like myself with both presbiopia and myopia can still comfortably view something close to the nose (without glasses).
jcadam 8y ago
Bah, my eye Rx is -8.5 diopters. Taking off my glasses/contacts doesn't "soften" the external world - it makes me unable to function. If I forget where I put my glasses after taking out my contacts at night before going to bed, I have to call my wife to find them for me. If I try moving around too much, I'm liable to hurt myself. I'll probably want to get LASIK at some point :)
- gm-conspiracy 8y ago
  I am -7.5 and agree w/ GP, especially for identifying SMD components and other details. But, yes, sometimes I need help finding my glasses, too.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  Both eyes worse than -6. I use special always-on contacts since 5 years ago or so, change them once a month. This reduces the hassle a lot.
- aschneid 8y ago
  I was at that point when I had it done. The only problem with having that bad of an eyesight, they have to use the laser for longer. It helped I had extra thick corneas, but the surgeon I went to said some folks can't have the surgery with eyes that bad. Of course, that was 15 years ago, so maybe different guidelines now.

ianai 8y ago

I tell people I could walk through a room of naked people and not see anything private.

enobrev 8y ago

This is the _one_ thing I miss about getting my eyesight fixed. Within a month of getting laser surgery, it was so natural that I'd essentially forgotten the experience of glasses and contacts, as though I'd never experienced the previous 20 years with them. One of my very favorite things to do before then was sit in Central Park, or at the Diversey Rocks in Chicago, or anywhere with lots of color, remove my glasses, and just enjoy the blur of it all. It was very calming. An escape from all the details around me, which immediately translated to an inner calm. I still prefer my perfect vision, and I paid a lot more than I could afford when I had it done to make sure it was done well. But I do very much miss that old shortcut to a quick and simple calm.

freddie_mercury 8y ago
Why not just buy some glasses that blur up your vision? And then go put them on in Central Park?
- chrfrasco 8y ago
  make sure they're rose-tinted too
- placeholderNam 8y ago
  As a glasses-wearer who understands the parent commenter: the all-encompassing vision granted by taking off the glasses (which cover ~60% of our regular view) is what makes for the wholesome, nice feeling OP is talking about.
ars 8y ago
You could force your eyes to blur and achieve the same effect. It's easier to do if you are tired, if you've never done it before. Crossing your eyes slightly also helps (then hold the blurry focus and uncross them).
- dandelany 8y ago
  The continuous effort required to force blurring pretty much negates the calming effect, I think.
Sharlin 8y ago
You can train your eye muscles to focus at whatever distance without needing something to fixate on. This allows you to blur your vision at will simply by focusing close.
- SomeHacker44 8y ago
  Only until presbyopia sets in, starting in your 40s and completing in the early 50s (usually).

dbtqgoat 8y ago

I do the same when I feel disillusioned with superficial beauty. Really pretentious, I know. Either way, it feels good to reduce people to blobs every once and a while. I sometimes get too distracted by looks, so being able to turn that off is nice.

titzer 8y ago

As a person who recently wore contacts every day until dry eyes and an injury forced me to switch back to glasses, I have almost entirely the opposite experience. It bothers me to wear glasses again. My prescription is quite strong, so it creates a pretty significant distortion, stronger towards the edges of the lenses. It's hard to do sports, as I now have a background fear about losing/breaking them, and the distortion messes with my hand/eye coordination. I had an episode skiing where I actually got nauseous from disorientation. As a result I do far less sports and that leads to other things. Ultimately, it has kind of screwed up my sense of scale of things, too, because the glasses make everything appear a bit smaller. When I take off my glasses the distortion goes away, of course, but I can't read street signs, see people's expressions, watch movies, and other things. Watching an incredible sunset or mountain scene with my own eyes...it's like looking at a 200x100 pixel image Gaussian blurred to fill the whole field of view. I might agree with you if my prescription is less, but TBH I wish I could get rid of these damn spectacles. On the other hand, it did teach me a bit about philosophy. E.g. now I realize that to see the world "clearly" I require lenses, I just never noticed before. All of my perception is actually through lenses, not just my eyes. Touch, taste, smell, feeling, all distorted by my senses. And it feeds into my mind, the biggest, most distorted lens of all :)

dilap 8y ago
not a candidate for lasik?
- titzer 8y ago
  No, given that my eyes are already so dry, and this plus contacts led to me injuring my corneas on more than one occasion, one of which meant I spent ~2 weeks in a dark room, essentially blind. So doctors recommend I do not do Lasik. :(
  - tormeh 8y ago
    What about Lasek? Generally has less complications and less invasive, but takes more time to heal.

wlll 8y ago

I have the same situation. When I take my glasses off and move stuff close to my eyes (really close, like around ~4cm) it's like looking through a microscope.

wccrawford 8y ago
I wrote a huge comment in reply to someone else, but I had this "superpower", too, and wasn't told that I'd lose it after having my vision corrected. I miss it.

Shikadi 8y ago

I don't think near sightedness means better than 20/20 up close...

teh_klev 8y ago
Personal anecdote...depends on your age. I'm near sighted (blind as a bat since my teens) and up until I was ~45'ish still had perfect 20/20 near sight vision. Up close I could read the tiniest of print and perform tasks and repairs on very small assemblies (I'm talking sub-millimetre PCB work and modelling). As I've gotten older this has gotten harder and these sorts of tasks now demand the use of a magnifying glass. This could probably be corrected with the use of varifocal lenses but for now I get on fine with a magnifier. Apropos the Lasik treatment, in my early 20's vanity got the better of me and I wore contact lenses for a time. There were also practicality reasons because I'm a biker and ruined several pairs of glasses trying to stuff the legs into my helmet. Anyway, I contracted an eye infection which over the period of a month affected both eyes and could have resulted in loss of sight in one eye. The doc reckoned I'd picked this up from the lenses despite me being totally anal about keeping them clean. I never wore contacts again. Despite the annoyance sometimes of having to wear eyeglasses, my eyesight even with its less than perfect capabilities, is too valuable a sense to lose. Despite all the Lasik success stories it bothered me enough that I might just be that unlucky sod it doesn't work on and could end up worse just for the sake of convenience and vanity.
AngryData 8y ago
It depends on the cause but if the only thing wrong is your eyes are focused to closely, then you will have better vision up close because you have better magnification from the shorter focused lens.

ataturk 8y ago

Many times my glasses have prevented debris from hitting me in the eye. I wear them for the safety aspect alone! Lasik always seemed risky to me--it's not reversible and if better technology comes along I would be out of luck. I also don't mind being nearsighted that much. It's a handicap at times, but not that big of a deal.

nomocrypto 8y ago

Heh, I do this too. It’s great after I’ve been staring at a screen for hours, although I also take my glasses off when using a computer because I really only need them For distance. I definitely feel like it helps my eyes relax a bit more to have my glasses off.

amorphous 8y ago

You are under 40 I assume? That's not gonna last forever

pps43 8y ago
Nearsightedness does not go away after 40 (presbiopia does not cancel out myopia).
- amorphous 8y ago
  I meant "viewing something as close to my nose as I comfortably can" won't last long.
  - pps43 8y ago
    People like myself with both presbiopia and myopia can still comfortably view something close to the nose (without glasses).

jcadam 8y ago

Bah, my eye Rx is -8.5 diopters. Taking off my glasses/contacts doesn't "soften" the external world - it makes me unable to function. If I forget where I put my glasses after taking out my contacts at night before going to bed, I have to call my wife to find them for me. If I try moving around too much, I'm liable to hurt myself. I'll probably want to get LASIK at some point :)

gm-conspiracy 8y ago
I am -7.5 and agree w/ GP, especially for identifying SMD components and other details. But, yes, sometimes I need help finding my glasses, too.
reitanqild 8y ago
Both eyes worse than -6. I use special always-on contacts since 5 years ago or so, change them once a month. This reduces the hassle a lot.
aschneid 8y ago
I was at that point when I had it done. The only problem with having that bad of an eyesight, they have to use the laser for longer. It helped I had extra thick corneas, but the surgeon I went to said some folks can't have the surgery with eyes that bad. Of course, that was 15 years ago, so maybe different guidelines now.