I have been having issues with my eyes off and on since getting Covid in 2022, but after my most recent bout with Covid those issues have gotten worse. Last week, I spent 90 mins at an ophthalmologist who deals with eye issues related to brain issues. I am pretty sure she did every test known to man kind that can be done on one’s eyes. Lights were tuned off and on, letters were flashed on the screen in different sizes, and multiple different clear colored squares were held up to my eye. By the end of the testing, my nausea levels were through the roof and I felt like I had just been on the Tilt a Whirl ride from hell.

After she completed all her testing she determined that one of the things I have going on is issues with my peripheral vision, mostly of my left side. Basically, my brain is at capacity just trying to deal with day to day life and doesn’t want to take the extra effort and work it requires to communicate correctly with the left side of my body, including my eyes. She didn’t officially say this, but basically my brain is real lazy. My brain is like an F student who is just not interested in working that hard. Besides getting new glasses and completing more tests, she recommended vision therapy to help teach my brain to communicate correctly with the left side of my body.

Peripheral vision is “the ability to see things to the side or up and down without moving your head.” The ability to see outside your central field of vision. I’ve been thinking since my appointment how many of us struggle with our peripheral vision when it comes to seeing outside ourselves. How many of us go through day to day life only seeing, noticing, validating, etc the things and people right in front of us and forget to look outside ourselves? We forget to notice the people in our community who are struggling. We forget to notice the colors of the leaves changing. We forget to notice that there is a whole diverse world filled with beauty just outside our central vision.

It’s easy to only look at what’s in our central field of vision and far more comfortable than having to look outside ourselves. It feels safer as what’s in our central field of vision is what we know, what we see everyday, what we feel like we have the illusion of control over. But I would ask, what are we missing by not looking outside ourselves and not using our peripheral vision?

I would challenge you to look outside yourself and to use your peripheral vision. You may just discover new people, places, experiences, and beauty you never knew existed.