Today, I am thankful for my eyesight, no matter how fleeting or deceiving it might be.
As we age, our cadre of experiences, expertise, and skills gradually increase with time. Yet, in my last twenty years, I’ve witnessed a gradual decrement in one skill – my ability to see. For the many years of my adolescence and young adulthood, I reveled knowing that my vision was pristine, always registering a 20/20 (or better) grade on a standard ophthalmic exam. However, as I crept into my fourth decade of life, I began appreciating certain emerging, subtle signs of ocular imperfection: the need to sit in a lighted space to read a novel; the use of a slightly larger font size in Microsoft Word; and those recurring headaches on my evening commute. My faculty for sight was slowly fading. Today, nearly two decades later, I’m relegated to wear eyeglasses everywhere I go. With my vision now closer to 20/40, I realize I’m in a losing battle against time.
I might be a bit myopic in my eyesight, but I’m not myopic to the fact that my time is short. Instead of wallowing in my sorrow over my decaying ocular senses, I’ve learned to appreciate that I need to take it all in before my gift for sight is beyond modern technological repair. So, I’m much more willing now to take a trip to an exotic place so I can cast eyes on it before it’s too late.
About a decade ago, a number of colleagues and I traveled to China and India for several key business meetings. While in New Delhi, one of my beloved colleagues, who was born in Hyderabad, arranged a private trip for us to visit the city of Agra, where a famous, majestic ivory-white mausoleum reigned supreme. Now I could write an entire blog highlighting all the wondrous sights my eyes witnessed on the nearly 130-mile, 5-hour trek to Agra, but I’ll save this for a later date. Instead, let’s focus today on the Taj Mahal, the most spectacular monument in Agra and one of the 10 purported wonders of the modern world.
The ruler of the Mughal Empire, Shah Janan, commissioned the construction of Taj Mahal in 1632 to serve as the final resting place for his most beloved third wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Much to the Emperor’s dismay, Mumtaz had died on this day (June 17) in 1631 at the age of 38. Today, Mumtaz’s tomb site, is without exaggeration, the most stunning edifice I have ever seen. Until you see the Taj up close, the architectural detail of the carved marble, the intricate design motifs in the stone, and the contrast of the multi-colored inlays of jasper, jade, and other-colored marble trick the eyes into believing all the design elements are painted on the marble. The structural symmetry and color coordination hides the slightly asymmetric design of the massive dome and the purposeful tilt of the four minarets that surround the central edifice, ultimately creating an optical illusion from a distance.
Our eyes can often deceive us. I’m reminded that on the same day we commemorate the death of the Mughal Empress, we also pay tribute to the birth of a master draftsman who spent his entire life creating optic illusions. Born on this day in 1898, MC Escher was a Dutch printmaker and illustrator who taught us the power of mental imagery. Using spatial effects and slight modifications of repeating themes, he created masterful mirages on two-dimensional paper that create the illusion of multidimensional metamorphosis. By creating a ‘regular division of the plane’, he created numerous, all-too-recognizable prints that depict visual hallucinations. Not surprisingly, and much to Escher’s dissatisfaction, his work drew the praise of the counterculture hippie revolution of the 1960s.
I’m thankful that my ocular muscles are still strong enough to allow me to appreciate all the visual wonders in this world, both natural and artificial. Take a moment to envision the world beyond what you immediately see in front of you. Sometimes what you are witnessing is much more than what you see.
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