I was 14 when I got glasses.  I’d needed them for a few years though before I realized it.

When I went outside with my new glasses on, I saw trees, I saw all their individual leaves, and I had this amazing appreciation of the trees and their leaves together.  Before that, I’d just seen big blobs of green. 

I immediately had a second realization that I was seeing trees the way everyone else saw them. 

Of course, we don’t ultimately know what anyone else sees, not with full certainty.  Yet we behave as if we’re living within the same realm, the same context.  That moment struck me, at age 14, because it hadn’t occurred to me that I might be seeing the world in a fundamentally different way than most people, because I was so near-sighted.

These are two parts of living I work to stay attuned to;  noticing both the details and the whole—the trees and their leaves—and not assuming that everyone else and I see the world the same way.

-Chris