MyopicThoughts

I’ve been short-sighted since my early teens. My parents didn’t take me seriously when I first complained about not being able to read the blackboard in the classroom,or the numbers on the public buses. They refused to believe that I couldn’t see clearly- firstly they themselves had a 20-20 vision and secondly because nobody in my family had any problems with the vision and because my parents are strong believers in genes and their potency to hand down traits, both physical and mental. And then as a child I loved trying on other people’s glasses. They assumed that I was angling to get my own set of glasses. I admit that there was some truth to their belief , because as a child I genuinely thought ( acually even now I do……..!)that people who wore glasses looked intelligent,scholarly and other-worldly.

I finally got my own pair after a couple of mishaps due to poor vision. As I was growing up I was dismayed at the associations in the English languague that people with my kind of vision problems encounter. I bristled when I realised that to be labelled ‘short sighted’ is a pejorative term and to be myopic is equally bad. The implications are that me and my ilk are bad at planning and donot think ahead.

In contrast people who have a similar but opposite medical condition of poor eyesight due to a refractive error –far-sightedness or hyperopia- are sitting pretty because the associations are laudatory and positive. Far-sighted people are by definition, well…far-sighted and good at planning, looking ahead and such things.

In india 7% of the total population (largely due to paucity of funds leading to not testing of optical disorders ,I suspect) to a high of 67% in Australia. Studies show that the incidence of short sightedness increases with the level of education with doctoral students reporting the highest levels-above 80%.

So it turns out that I was right about my correlation between intelligence and myopia!!!!!
Short sighted and myopic people of the world-lets unite and insist on a change in the phrase used to describe our condition in English languague. We have nothing to lose.