Blindness and Insight

7/16/07

“O gods! Who is’t can say “I am at the worst”?
I am worse than e’er I was
And worse I may be yet. The worst is not
So long as we can say “This is the worst.”
-- Edgar, King Lear

An irony in all of this concerns a miracle of science visited on me shortly before my diagnosis. In April and May I had staggered cataract surgeries in both eyes that put me in touch with a visual world I had been increasingly estranged from. I could see! The waxed paper veil that had gradually shrouded my vision over the years was suddenly lifted from me. I looked out my window and saw a Pileated Woodpecker pecking the bark of Silver Maple. I followed the languid leaps of a slow moving garden Toad crouching admidst a camouflage of dead leaves and new grass. Suddenly its tongue shot out and swallowed a Japanese beetle, its body shuddering slightly while digesting a mid-day repast. I could see!

OK, so I’m getting carried away. What this wondrous restoration left me to ponder was how the supreme species in the biological kingdom, an animal that can create cathedrals and cure the dying, can also descend to the level of creating poison gases, atomic bombs, and concentration camps. The theosophical ideology behind the creation of Notre Dame is the same belief system that justified crusading down the Danube to slay the Islamic infidels while killing every Jew, Gypsy, and Homosexual along the way. Ah Humanity! If you think that disease is an apolitical issue you might ask why this aside. For me, politics has to do with ethics and morality. There is no escaping the fact that reproductive rights, stem cell research and universal health care have a political valence.

Getting back to irony and eye surgeries. The personal epiphany I’ve experienced since the diagnosis has given me a psychological insight no clarity of physical vision could ever provide. In the words of Lear, "I stumbled when I saw.” While the goal of therapy is to induce self-enlightenment through personal examination, there is nothing to compare to a glimpse of one’s own mortality as a means of gaining spiritual insight. There is no avoiding asking yourself who you really are.

By the way, I'm ecstatic! The doctor called and said my bone marrow biopsy was negative.