Reading Glasses. Oh, Crap.

It has come to this. Reading glasses.

I know that for many of you reading this, glasses have been a part of your life for years, if not from childhood. This has not been my experience. Only in recent years have I started to notice it is harder to focus on small things, like the print on medicine bottles.

For a long time I was in denial. I had never had problems with my eyes and yet, ever so subtly, my ability to read the fine print was diminishing. Finally, I could deny it no more. My eyes had betrayed me. Even so, I could not bring myself to even try on a pair of reading glasses.

There was too much emotional stigma attached to admitting I needed glasses—a clear indication I was not getting younger, vanity, pride, loss of cool (I didn’t have a much of this to lose . . . if any actually.)

One day I am at a friend’s home and he had several pairs of reading glassed lying around. I was trying to read the label on a bottle and decided to try on a pair. My world changed. I could actually read the label, something that up to a second ago was a blurry fuzz—all because I put the glasses on. Not only did my vision become clear but my perspective changed.

I now wear reading glasses. I liked being able to read the fine print and small type. I have since purchased several (three pack at Costco) and have them in strategic places. I still don’t use them often, but when I need them, they do the job. They don’t make me look cool but I don’t care—I realize it’s worth being able to see clearly.

Why don’t we just suck it up and do what it takes to see clearly more often? I could have been reading small print long ago if I have only put down my hang-ups and picked up some reading glasses. In what ways to you find yourself resisting “putting on some reading glasses?” and what is the resistance you face? Have you figured out how to get past it?