Vision.

Your eyeballs are the same size now that they were the day you were born. This means that I had gigantic eyeballs as a baby. I grew into them.

I'm one of the few in my family who does not wear glasses. I've always been a little jealous of the rest of them. Interestingly enough, I found out that smoking damages the cornea and leads to irreversible blindness. I just quit smoking and am the oldest and longest smoker in my family. I hope this does not make me blind.

If given a choice between going deaf and going blind, I would rather go deaf. I am a bad listener some days anyways. I think it would be terrifying to go blind. I know I wouldn't be able to enjoy music or sing in the same way anymore if I went deaf but blindness feels more vulnerable.

I used to work near an organization that provided services to the blind. I would end up at the bus stop with people who were blind and/or deaf. One time, I watched two blind and deaf men communicate with each other by pressing their hands into the other man's open palms and making movements. There was so much physical contact. It was the only way they could get the message across. I thought, 'If we were all deaf and blind, we would have no choice but to touch each other.'

I think being touched would be frightening as a blind person. I'm assuming that I would get to know the touch of those most familiar to me. What if I was wrong?

The blind are sometimes used in movies as wise, older people who have the power of premonition. They come stuttering from cave openings, leaning on canes twisted from the darkness, waving their arms around and trying to get our attention. 'I've seen the future,' they tell us, 'and it doesn't look good.'

I'd like to hear someone tell me the future looks good. I would love it if someone woke me up one morning and said, 'Good News! If we continue on -- exactly as we have been -- everything is going to be okay.'

Lately, I have developed the habit of telling people, 'It's going to be fine.' This isn't a sympathetic response to a difficult situation. It is more of an automated response to hardship. I wish that I had something better to say -- or that I no longer felt the need to say anything at all, except I'm sorry.

I think the roughest thing would be having premonitions. If I knew how things were going to turn out (even just one or two things of a higher importance than my morning eggs) I would like to believe that I would be the kind of person who would try to fix any of the negative things I saw coming. This goes against my belief that, good or bad, the things that have happened in my life have led me here. I like it here.

I don't really like it here but it is very much the same as saying, 'It's going to be fine.'

I do believe that we have an impact on how our lives turn out. This is not to say that everything turns out well simply because we wish it. This is also not to say that everything turns out well simply because we deserve it.

I deserve to have everything turn out well.

I wish for everything to turn out well.

So far, everything has not turned out well, but it's fine.

Where does this expression come from? This 'turning out well'? It makes me think of stone wells filled with water. It makes me think we are attempting to empty out the last drop. It makes me wonder if we are greedy for wanting things to be simply decent. Are they decent in other parts of the world? Some parts of them, I suppose.

I would like to get to the end of my life and say that it was better than decent. I'd like to say I saw everything clearly as what it was, rather than what I wished it to be, and that it was good that way.