Glasses—three pairs!

Nothing says your 40s like multiple pairs of glasses! But actually I've been juggling two pairs of glasses since my early adult years. I'm short sighted with astigmatism, so I've used glasses for distance since my late teens and had prescription sunglasses since I was 20. For decades I've been switching my glasses out the front of shops and other buildings as I move from outside to inside.

Only in the last couple of years have I needed transition lenses—lenses that allow me to read while I'm wearing my glasses. Now, it seems, I actually need reading glasses. I can read without them, but my eyes tire quickly. Even reading a book on my lap for a longer period with my transition lenses is hard, as there is only a small area where the print is completely clear.

For work on the computer, reading in bed, and for reading music, I use the ones on the left. The middle ones are my all-range glasses. Distance on top and reading on the bottom. The sunglasses lenses really need updating, they are for distance, but an old prescription. I can't read with them on, which is a pain when reading a map while in the car or my phone in bright sunshine.

I must say that I'm really enjoying the reading glasses. They make working on the computer and reading in bed a much better experience! Especially reading in bed. The frames are very thin and perfect for lying on my side on a pillow. Not as perfect as reading without glasses at all, but as close as you can get using glasses.

But it is a new challenge to change glasses when I change from working at the computer to doing other things. Turning away from the computer to look at someone across the room isn't great with reading glasses on. I understand the challenge that I've seen preachers deal with: reading their sermon with glasses on and having to take them off to look at the congregation. I haven't lost them yet, but I suspect that's probably in the works (and no, I'm not keen at all to hang them around my neck).

I've not really felt really "young" for quite some time now, but this really is a measurable step away from youth. There's quiet grief that underlies that—that I'm irreversibly moving away from a body that works as well as it was made to work. I guess, one of the blessings of older age (apart from growing in wisdom) could be that it is easier to be less attached to life here on this imperfect earth with an increasingly broken body? Easier to long for a perfect heaven with a perfect body?

This is a follow-up post from Dec 28, when I'd had the middle pair only a few days. This was my very first foray personally into the Japanese glasses scene. I'm definitely more used to my Japanese-transition glasses than I was, but they aren't yet 100% intuitive.