Sight vs. Vision
[Music]
i just want to be very clear it’s not
that i can’t keep a job
it’s that i don’t know what i want to be
when i grow up
so first things first
change is all around us the title of
this was sight versus vision
i’d like to slightly change that i would
like to
ask you to go along with me on my
journey through site so i can share
some of the lessons i’ve learned about
vision
but like any journey you have some prep
work
to do so the first thing i’m going to
ask is how many of you out there have
that one piece of clothing
the shirt the sweater the jeans the
sweatpants
that your friends and your family can’t
stand
right we all have that
yet in spite of all
of that evidence the data it’s stained
it’s stretched it’s
torn it’s out of fashion it remains
stubbornly in our closet
i have this jacket this jacket is no
longer fashionable
it’s frayed my favorite pocket
is the one that hangs out
yet this coat is held together by
memories it’s held together by
experiences
and it brings me comfort
the ability to ignore reality to protect
our memories our experiences and our
comfort
is uniquely human it’s also a good
working definition of resistance to
change
so when you start to prepare to go on a
journey
you have to prepare to be very
uncomfortable
we have to take those memories that no
longer
mean what we think and get them out of
our closet
before we start the journey again i’m
going to offer you my definition
of sight sight is a physiological
and neurological system to gather data
nothing more nothing less
how many people in this room have 20 20
vision
okay how many of you have corrected 20
20 vision
excellent so your eyesight’s perfect
your eyes are fine i’m going to
challenge you on that
i would like all of you to form a
triangle with your fingers
keeping both eyes open
that light in the ceiling put it in the
center of that triangle
now close your left eye open it
close your right eye what did you see
one eye works as well as when both eyes
are open
and the other one is skewed
so no matter how perfect our 2020 vision
is
we’re not always getting the same data
from sources that we trust
so let’s say that’s the first thing
we’re taking on our trip after getting
rid
of our memories
at the age of 35 i was blessed i had
2010 vision and one eye in 2015 in the
other
glasses i didn’t need no stinking
glasses
i was proud of that sort of very
comfortable in the fact that
my eyes were about as good as you can
get
at the age of 40 on this journey i’m
grading papers
and i’m reading research on my laptop
and the words start to merge
and then the sentences start to merge
pretty soon the paragraphs are starting
to merge
all the evidence that my eyes were aging
was there
but because i’m a human being i did what
most of us would do
drive right past the optometrist to the
pharmacy
to the kiosk for my 1.5 power glasses
because there was nothing wrong with my
sight my eyes were tired
and i told myself that until i was 45
when suddenly distance was an issue
now let me give you a little bit of
context the red brick
you see in these buildings all over
campus has a side that’s very granular
sandy if you rub it it actually comes
off in your fingers when your vision is
2010 you can see that granular surface
from 20 yards away
i am now straining through the
windshield of my car
to try and read the road sign that just
went by
dramatic change a little bit
disconcerting actually
more evidence was coming my way
and as an informed adult i did exactly
what you can anticipate i threw out
those 1.5 power glasses
drove right to the pharmacy and got the
2.0s
because i didn’t realize how tired my
eyes were
age of 50 i was about to be informed
that my world was going to change
i was going to be told that i had
astigmatism
now for those of you that aren’t
familiar with astigmatism
the cornea the lens of your eyes is
supposed to be
smooth clean just perfect
but over time and due to some different
conditions
it becomes like a rugby ball
or assumes the shape of a soccer ball
well there’s a problem since the cornea
is supposed to be flat and let
light in throughout your eye it’s
suddenly bouncing off the uneven
surfaces
i’m in the optometrist office about to
find this out he has one of those fancy
machines he puts up to my face
it looks like a sci-fi version of a
mardi gras mask
if you’ve ever seen that one up there
and he says i’m going to start turning
these dials
you tell me when something happens
i hear the click i hear another click
suddenly every light in the room
explodes
and i’m seeing everything so clear
and it was the first aha moment in my
journey
that my unwillingness to pay attention
to all the facts i had accepted
that i would live in darkness and
without clarity
but the optometrist he did a great job
diagnosed it
wrote that prescription i went and got
my trifocals
the issues were all taken care of
then i had my second aha moment
for those of you that have worn bifocals
or trifocals and can remember back to
the first time you put them on
and the whole world moves you learn that
walking downstairs and stepping off the
curbs is a whole new life experience
with trifocals
the aha moment was you may finally admit
you need
glasses you may even seek out
the best lenses but if you don’t
practice
using them if you don’t incorporate them
into your
every day life
it’s a wasted effort
so that was a journey through my own
site
that paralleled my journey of
understanding
about the term vision vision
in my book is the interpretation of the
data
that your site gathered
in 1988 i was the admitting charge nurse
at the baltimore shock trauma center in
the neurotrauma unit
i was working evening shifts a gentleman
was admitted
brought in and i’m doing his neuro exam
just like anybody who watches grey’s
anatomy because that’s such an exact
science of the show
i had the flashlight so i went across
the eyes the pupils moved like they were
supposed to
i said follow my finger up down
back forth and that person tracked
everything one problem
they were blind the next
lesson the gentleman had been hit with a
baseball bat
to the back of the skull his eyes were
responding
because he still had his sight his data
gathering mechanisms
the baseball bat scrambled his visual
cortex
the interpretation part of the brain
so the next learning hit me at that
point as a brand new nurse
that i can have vision without sight
but i can’t have sight without vision
so i continued to look at my journey
through glasses
and challenge my journey through vision
first stop is what is nearsighted
vision i only had to look at myself
i was a detailed person i was type a
i was a project manager i think the
classic term for someone like me is i
was anal
i was so about my project i never saw
how it plugged
into the bigger picture and if the
bigger picture dictated a change
in my project i fought it
because it was going to make me take
that coat off
and i wasn’t ready for it
farsighted as you mature
especially in the business world i
suddenly had far sighted vision
i was all about the big picture you have
to understand where we’re going
as i would run through the stop signs
right in front of me
i lost the ability to look at the
details in my life and sometimes
revel in the wonder of the details
because i always was looking to the
future
a perfect example of this is anyone who
has ever worked with a person who got a
promotion
and the very next thing they did was
start planning their next promotion
and they forget about all the details in
between
but just like sight the biggest
threat to your vision
is what i will call visual astigmatism
each of these represent biases
assumptions to ask
refusal to accept denial
in other words visual astigmatism
is your acceptance of darkness
and your willingness to live without
clarity
now the problems i’ve discussed in
vision
are correctable with
sight you eventually stop driving by and
actually go to the optometrist
but if you want to correct your vision
there’s only one expert that can do it
and that’s you
you take the memories and keep the
appropriate ones
can you start listening to the people
around you
are you willing to accept change
so where an optometrist might write a
prescription
you need to sit and reflect with the
most important person
in your life and that’s yourself
now step away from this as we get kind
of heavy and deep
i’m going to ask how many people in the
room have multiple pairs of sunglasses
okay guilty is charged
i have this pair of sunglasses for when
i hike
when i camp it’s sort of my
homage to macgyver i like to have those
when i fish i have these
and these are for absolutely everything
else
how many of you have gone to the
pharmacy to target to whatever store
and looked up in that little piece of
reflective plastic and went
awesome for bethany these would be
great in the car
they’ll go nuts when they see me in
these
i’ll leave you with a question how many
of you have spent
that much time selecting
cleaning and learning to use your
internal lenses
thank you