7/12/2025 Ami
When I was in elementary school, my eyesight was 1.5. It stayed the same through junior high, but in high school it gradually got worse, dropping as low as 0.2 at one point. Recently, on good days, it sometimes goes back up to around 0.8—though I’m not even sure if eyesight can really have “good days.”
I made my first pair of glasses in high school. When I put them on for the first time, the world looked so sharp that I thought, “Glasses are kind of fun.” But after ten minutes, my head felt heavy, and soon I had a headache. There was this strange feeling around my temples and between my brows, and I couldn’t keep the glasses on. Contacts were the same.
Still, since I didn’t really struggle in everyday life, I just thought, “Oh well,” and left things as they were.
When I became an adult, my eyesight started getting flagged during driver’s license renewals and health checkups, so I made another pair of glasses. But I kept forgetting them when going to checkups, and during license renewal I was told to take them off for the photo because of reflections—so I hardly ever end up wearing them.
The other day, while I was talking with the owner of Aoi Komado, the shared bookstore in Asagaya, the topic of glasses came up. The owner said, “In places like Shibuya Station or anywhere really crowded, I have to take my glasses off or I get exhausted.”
I was surprised—people who usually wear glasses can also get tired?
She explained that busy, cluttered places come with tons of visual information, and when all of that rushes in at once, it’s overwhelming. Hearing that, I suddenly thought, “Maybe that’s why I can’t wear glasses.” It finally clicked for me.
Glasses forcibly improve your eyesight. But that also means they let in everything you hadn’t been seeing—the details, the noise, the chaos. Maybe that flood of “newly visible things” was simply too much for me.
It reminded me of a training session I once attended. There was an elderly person with dementia who used a leg brace, and the instructor boldly cut down the device the manufacturer had made—reducing the number of straps so it was no longer “perfect,” but easier for the person to use. The instructor said, “Sometimes a device that’s only 50% complete is actually the best for that person,” and I remember thinking that even a perfect product becomes useless if it’s too hard to use, while an imperfect one might be used forever if it fits the person well.
Apparently, the instructor made those cuts right in front of the manufacturer’s representative. “Their face slowly tightened up—they were holding their head in their hands by the end!” the instructor said, laughing, and that wrapped up the story.
My eyes may be “imperfect” in terms of eyesight, but this is the world that’s easiest for me to see.
And maybe—that’s perfectly fine.