Averyt: Changing Light

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(HOST) Now that the cloud cover has lifted from commentator Anne Averyt’s eyes,
she sees more clearly and appreciates even more what she sees.

(AVERYT)
I can see clearly now , Johnny Nash sang back in 1972, the rain is
gone. For me, it’s the clouds. I see clearly now thanks to state of the
art lens implants replacing my cataract clouded ones. For too long I
have been looking at life through a veil darkly; now I see images with
high def clarity in Blu-ray color. Light has new meaning and my life has
new vision.

Cataracts growing over the lens of my eyes turned
my world milky. I looked out through the drape of a sheer curtain. I had
forgotten how rich the hue of red can be, how blue the sky is, what
white white really looks like. Suddenly with my new eyes, Vermont greens
are greener and this year’s fall foliage is rioting with color.

I’ve
long appreciated the painter Paul Gauguin’s observation that "I close
my eyes in order to see". Gauguin was talking about the power of seeing
through the inner eye, that wonderful eye of imagination, so rich and
evocative. But for me there is new excitement about seeing clearly for
the first time in so long what is really there .

I’ve actually
had a hard time getting adjusted to seeing. It is only now that I can
see sharply and clearly that I realize how impaired my vision has been.
Sometimes we know something best because we have experienced its
opposite; our awareness grows more keen in the presence of absence. I
know victory because I have tasted defeat. I love warmth because I have
been cold. I fathom fullness because I have plumbed emptiness. And I
appreciate my sight even more because I have experienced the world
diminished.

Change for me this fall is not just about trees and
leaves; the changing light is not just about days growing shorter and
the transition to a new season. I joke with friends that I am growing a
bionic body, new eyes and knees just a few years old, joints of
titanium. I move more freely now, I see more clearly. I also question
less often where the path I am taking will lead.

Even though I
see more with my eyes open, like Gauguin I still need to close my eyes
to get my bearings. I need to close my two eyes so that my third eye,
that eye of imagination, my sexton, can show me my path.

It
turns out it takes time and effort to see with clarity what is really
there. It also takes practice to trust the vision of the third eye. So
in reality and in metaphor it is as Johnny Nash sang way back then …

"Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind, It’s gonna be a bright, bright Sun -Shiny day."

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