Eye exams have changed. For most of my life, they focused - forgive the pun- on a chart with an oversized E and a string of ever decreasing letters designed to fool me. The end result was a prescription for glasses, or since the seventies, contacts. 

 

But my recent appointment included a machine that allowed the tester to know my answers without me having to utter a sound.  Another seemed intent on measuring my peripheral vision, though performance anxiety may have accounted for a few preemptive clicks on my part. 

 

I am fond of my eyesight, and feel grateful for these advances in technology to protect it. The capacity to know my surroundings and enjoy the panorama of beauty around me is nothing short of a miracle. 

 

I have not the flimsiest comprehension of how it works, this bouncing light that instantly describes shape, distance, and color to my brain. Transparency is not clear to me, if you know what I mean, nor are details about texture. The flow of information ignores words entirely, which, as much as I use them, fail to embellish a sunset. 

 

Those people whose eyes have given up the ghost know the depth of darkness. A faithful German Shepherd helps with mobility, but I daresay cannot convey wonder. 

 

There are other maladies of this capacity to see the world as it is. Fear brings its own dimness, as does anger. A lack of empathy or gratitude render me blind to what even Helen Keller could sense. 

 

"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
And the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
 Then the lame shall leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the dumb sing." Isaiah 35