I remember when I decided to finally give in and got my first pair of reading glasses. By then, I had spent years squinting, blinking and trying to adjust to the increasing focal length that eventually surpassed my arms’ reach. The ensuing revelation that printing techniques had not deteriorated into barely legible smudges and that letters actually had crisp, precise edges turned me into a clear vision evangelist.

“Seeing clearly is better!”, I would lecture my resistant friends and family who were in need of, but disdained the use of prismatic enhancement.

Could it be that in the balance of vanity versus vision, that vanity illogically has such weight? Or, does focus simply eliminate the excuse of misinterpretation which allowed such historically blurred decisions as fiddling while Rome burned or letting them eat cake or invading Iraq…among others?

The personal consequence of putting off corrective lenses can range from irksome to fatal. (Fuzzy typesetting can be annoying, but, missing the kid in the crosswalk?) Globally, our lack of focus is catastrophic. As we flounder from crisis to crisis in myopic reaction to natural and man-made disasters, the lack of focus for what lies ahead is our biggest problem. If we can’t see the ultimate insanity of creating unsustainable amounts of deadly nuclear waste, the fracking eventuality of poisoning our water tables, warring without wisdom and an endless list of other bloggable issues, what exactly are we looking at?

Oh, Magoo…you’ve done it again!