I recently walked out of a glasses store in a mall in Jakarta with a new realization and a mild prescription. Diagnosis: Myopia and Astigmatism.
For a long time, I didn’t think I needed glasses. I could see the road, I could read my screen, and I could navigate Manggarai Station (mostly). I lived in a world where distant objects had a slightly soft, “filmic” quality. I didn’t think it was a bug. I just thought that was how the world was rendered.
Then, I put on my first pair of glasses. It wasn’t like jumping from black-and-white to color, it was more like cleaning a window I hadn’t realized was dusty.
The peak of the mountain
There is a biological reality to this. Research in ophthalmology shows that human visual functions, including acuity, contrast sensitivity, and the eye’s ability to focus, tend to peak in our late teens and 20s. By the time we hit 40, most of us encounter presbyopia (the loss of near-focusing ability), and other functions begin a gradual, natural decline.
Standing on the plateau of my visual peak, correcting even a mild blur reminded me that right now is objectively the clearest I will ever see the world. It’s a reminder to appreciate the “high-resolution” details of the present while the hardware is at its best. The world is full of textures, the individual leaves on a tree in the park, the sharp edges of a building against the sky, which I had been unintentionally ignoring.
The “Unknown Unknown”
The most interesting part of getting glasses wasn’t the vision itself, it was realizing I had been wrong about my own “normal.”
Because the decline of vision is usually slow, the brain does an incredible job of compensating. It fills in the gaps and smooths over the edges. I was so used to my specific “smudge” that I never questioned it. This is a classic “Unknown Unknown”, a limitation so integrated into your life that you don’t even know it exists.
As a Product Manager, I’m trained to look for gaps in data and roadmaps. But this was a gap in my own perception. It made me wonder: what other mental “smudges” am I treating as normal? What other fictional walls have I built because I’ve become too comfortable with a low-resolution version of the truth?
A literal lesson for an overthinker
I self-diagnosed myself as an overthinker, my brain spends a lot of time trying to resolve things that are far away. I squint at the 5-year plan, I worry about the “blurry far beyond,” and I get a metaphorical headache trying to predict a future that hasn’t happened yet.
Having myopia feels like a literal nudge from the universe: Focus on what is close to you first. My eyes are naturally built to see the things right in front of me with clarity. When I try to force them to see miles away without help, things get distorted and tiring.
There is a lesson there for my mind, too. Instead of spiraling about the “blurry distance”, the career pivots, and the “what-ifs”, I should focus on the details that are in focus right now. The people I’m talking to, the things I’m doing today, and the small moments that deserve my full attention. The distant horizon will always be a bit blurry until you get there. For now, it’s enough to just appreciate the sharp beauty of what’s within reach.