Take Care of your Eyes

It's always sad when something like this happens. A person permanently loses sight in one eye after wearing a novelty contact lens for three days straight. He used to have perfect vision. People really should exercise more caution when it comes to something as sensitive as an eye. Regardless of how comfortable they feel or how well they've been engineered, contacts are still foreign objects to a person's eye.

In a normal eye, tear ducts pump out tears to lubricate the eye, and the shape of the eyes and eyelids are evolved in a way that lets the tears be distributed to keep your eyes healthy. When anything gets into your eyes (e.g. soap or sand), it disturbs the distribution of fluids in your eyes and irritates it. Contacts are special in that they are designed to not disturb this balance, at least too much. Being foreign objects, they will still mess with the natural flow of fluid in your eyes and will increase the chances of other irritants getting stuck there. In addition, if the contacts are used improperly or if something else goes wrong, all bets are off.

This doesn't mean that contacts shouldn't ever be used; to be sure, contacts are a great convenience sometimes, they just need to be dealt with carefully. Did you know that most contact users have accretions in their eyes from infections that have developed? They're usually harmless, but that's the kind of information that made me switch to glasses. Nowadays, I only wear them when playing sports or doing other physical activities, or when drinking soup. This past week, I've been wearing them because after walking in the cold for a few minutes, it takes several minutes for my glasses to defog.

It's interesting how far a pair of glasses goes to affect the appearance of a person. Because I switch between glasses and contacts a lot, a lot of times people would say to me things like, "I didn't recognize you without your glasses." Does this mean that when people see me, they only see a pair of glasses? Do I suddenly turn into another person without the glasses on? Of course not. However, statements like that do point to other opinions that people may hold about a person with glasses. For example, the stereotype of the nerd with thick glasses could have permeated our psyche with the idea that glasses indicate intelligence but also weakness. Unfortunately for a lot of people, cosmetics is the only factor when deciding between one method of vision correction over another when in truth, issues of health, sanitation, and convenience should be greater factors.

I do hope that people are intelligent enough to operate beyond cosmetics and appearances, but sometimes a person can't help but wonder how much these stereotypes affect our lives.