The after effects of the cataract diagnosis

 I forgot the most important part of the last post. When first told I have cataracts my initial response was that I'm too young to have them. And while this is partially true, it led to some good mental revelations. 

A little backstory. My father passed away when I was 12 years old. I was super sad, but I also understood that old people die. That was the course of nature. I'm sure other people died in the intervening years, but the next 'brush' with death I remember is when I was 19. A girl I had gone to school with was killed in a motorcycle accident. This really shook me. We weren't close or anything, in fact I don't think I'd seen her in years, but this was the first time someone my age, that I knew had died. That shook me. Made me realize that I'm not invincible. I got it. Again, an interval of years and I'm sure people died, in fact I know they did. My brother died. My grandparents died. And I'm sure there were others I'm forgetting. And while all these deaths made me very sad, they didn't really touch 'me', if that makes any sense at all. Then in 2017 we had that horrific accident in the van. That incident brought home to me that we could literally die any second through no fault of our own. So that made me appreciate life much more and it helped me to learn to live in the moment. It also made me a little more cautious but not crazy so. I was aware that we could die any second and so I just take care to not stack the odds against me. I still do things, just with eyes wide open now. But this cataract diagnosis did something very different. It made me realize that I could die of old age. That nothing I do, nothing, can stop the progression of time. Things on my body are going to wear out. Things are going to fail. And there is not a damn thing I can do to stop that. That was a lightening bolt of realization to me. Suddenly the reasons for self care became doubly important. Suddenly I understood that I wanted to put off the inevitable march of time as much as possible. Suddenly how I take care of myself and the only body that I have became much more important. So I'm upping my self  care game. So yeah, this puts a whole new perspective on things.