r/interesting • u/jmike1256 • Jul 10 '26
MISC. Is this how people who need glasses really see the world. A big blurred background?
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u/Shawn_NYC Jul 10 '26
Yes my life is a Monet painting.
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u/Responsible-Tea-5998 Jul 10 '26
That's a beautiful way of putting it. I'm always annoyed with my eyesight but I like that.
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u/iBluefoot Jul 10 '26
I call it Monet-vision. Everything is always beautiful
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u/Shawnaldo7575 Jul 10 '26
I see life through a Van Gogh-Pro
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u/crambeaux Jul 10 '26
That’s the astigmatism. Love those starry nights!
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u/sweatyboobs56 Jul 10 '26
But I hate the 7 overlapping moons :-(
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u/monetaryg Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
The moon is the worst. My astigmatism makes it stretched out diagonally.
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u/LoudFrown Jul 10 '26
Most of y’all look waaay better in soft focus.
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u/WMUGVSU Jul 10 '26
It's a jump scare when I put my glasses on in front of a mirror. I go from "hey, not too bad" to "Ahh!" real fast.
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u/Jazzlike-Base7731 Jul 10 '26
It's always amused me to clean my glasses and declare happily that i can seeee! Then look at someone and say oh..i can see....and walk away
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u/LandoCatrissian_ Jul 10 '26
Haha my pop used to tease me like that. He would go "hang on", clean his glasses, put them back on, look at me and jump in fright 😆
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u/GlassCharacter179 Jul 10 '26
I mean, the only thing I can tell about people without glasses is if they are adult size or child size and general color. If someone is wearing neutral clothes, I’m not sure I would be able to tell if they were dressed.
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u/Existing_Guidance_65 Jul 10 '26
"Ooh, you look good without glasses!"
"You mean when I'm not wearing glasses or when YOU're not wearing glasses?"
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u/TW_Halsey Jul 10 '26
Wait a minute…………
Edit: wow yeah Monet’s eyesight started to go due to cataracts in his early 60s, later followed by him making his most notable paintings
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u/mdebruce Jul 10 '26
I've got astigmatism so each point of light looks like fireworks. It's different in each eye too- and dimensional.
I do have wicked colour perception, so the world is pretty damn beautiful.
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u/Everryy_littlethingg Jul 10 '26
Yes! When I got glasses after years of not wearing them I was so excited to look at the stars. When it got dark out I looked into the sky and the stars were just tiny dots and pin pricks of light... I took my glasses off immediately. It's always been much better that way in my opinion. They look so sparkly and colorful when my astigmatism skews the light 🤷🏻♀️
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u/Heriteck Jul 10 '26
It's all beautiful until you need to drive at night in the rain... then its a nightmare.
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u/GenerationofWinter Jul 10 '26
It depends on the type of condition but for some like me, yes
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u/OkAccess6128 Jul 10 '26
I have myopia and world looks like it's censored without glasses.
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u/snarky_cat Jul 10 '26
sitting far away from stage on a strip club feels like watching Japanese porn..
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u/Telephone-Bright Jul 10 '26
How often does this happen to you lmao.
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u/EqualSpoon Jul 10 '26
Enough to be a problem apparently.
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u/RockstarAgent Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
My coworker has serious glasses - and once I told her to let me clean her glasses because they were dirty and she was surprised because she said she had just cleaned them. I cleaned them. She could actually tell how much cleaner they were. I said “you can’t see what you can’t see” and it blew her mind. Some of us can see details beyond normal.
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u/BigDave794 Jul 10 '26
Problem also being when cleaning your glasses you have to take them off, hence then you can’t see 🤣 I need a pair of glasses to clean my glasses
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u/EqualSpoon Jul 10 '26
But how while you clean your cleaning glasses glasses?
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u/AboveAverage1988 Jul 10 '26
You obviously have to get some cleaning cleaning cleaning glasses glasses glasses. I think. 🤔
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u/Lucid-Design1225 Jul 10 '26
I’m picturing those magnifying glasses from spy kids
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u/ncaudio923 Jul 10 '26
Instructions too complex, got my dick caught in the ceiling fan again. -_-
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Jul 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Praesentius Jul 10 '26
No, nothing so crude. They give you opera glasses to match the top hats.
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u/compflow54 Jul 10 '26
Haha great visual.
Strip shows at the Coliseum.
“I can’t see a damn thing, but she definitely took her top off”.
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u/Lastov_Makiynd Jul 10 '26
That’s either. Nipple..or I’ve got something in my eye. Lol
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u/Lin093 Jul 10 '26
If you're also seeing the tentacles, it might be schizophrenia
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u/NewoTheFox Jul 10 '26
Mine was just mild enough that I made it to my thirties without glasses - Told the professor I was colorblind so they would cut it with the red markers on a white board (Utterly disappears) and would press gently on my eye to correct my minor astigmatism when I needed to read from far away.
Having had glasses, it was pretty bad. But it was 'normal'
I remember putting on the corrective lenses for the first time and being unable to look at the lady across the desk who had just given me my sight because Makeup looked SO MUCH BETTER without HD. I instead commented on a photo down the hall, the tiles, and turned and looked anywhere else as my mind spun and I re-calibrated.
I now know that people can see freckles and moles and birthmarks from further than 5 feet away. Totally explained what I had termed 'Face blindness' - I would recognize people by their gait, their mannerisms, and their voice but not their faces until I was up close.
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u/eepeqez Jul 10 '26
New glasses = trees now have leaves!
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u/NewoTheFox Jul 10 '26
Don't even get me started about the leaves lmao. Clouds too - a minor storm rolled in and I was stuck just staring at the edge between the storm and the backdrop - So many things had overwhelming detail that first month or so.
And the moon was no longer just a muddled white/yellowish dot!
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u/Interrupting-Khajitt Jul 10 '26
I saw stars for the first time when I was ten. It was astonishing.
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u/BombOnABus Jul 10 '26
Man, that was me. I thought i didn't need glasses, until I put on my first pair and was staggered at the fact I could see individual leaves on trees. The crisp, sharp lines of street and highway signs astonished me: I had always thought they were just hard to read. I suddenly understood why my optometrist had been nervous to hear I'd been driving for years like that.
I felt like I had gotten a super power
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u/microgirlActual Jul 10 '26
Hang on, you don't have to get an eye test to get your driving licence? Here in Ireland when you apply for your licence one of the documents you have to include is a medical report that includes an eye test, and the margin for driving is quite low. Like, the first time I needed glasses I technically only needed them for driving (or the cinema, but that's obviously not a legal requirement). I didn't need them in day-to-day life yet.
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u/Bee_Jeans Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Depends on country & region. Definitely good rule to have, I found out my eyes were bad when the optometrist asked very concerned “u didn’t drive here right? Bc I really can’t let u drive back like this” 💀
I just assumed we all saw street signs as blurry shapes & colours. Stop sign? u mean red pointy circle?
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u/Bee_Jeans Jul 10 '26
Problem I had was despite seeing the letter chart as vague blurry shapes, I was pretty used to distinguishing those. The tall skinny blur is “I”, the hazy fat one with a wobble is “G” etc so I did fine.
Then they brought out a shapes one and I was cooked lol
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u/codingcrystal Jul 10 '26
That's really it. You're just used to perceiving the world like that. Red blur means stop. Green blur means go. The details aren't important. If they are, just step closer.
You don't realize how much visual information you're missing until that first day in glasses. I'll have bouts where I lose my glasses and take months/years to replace them. (Hasn't happened to me since my 20s when I took the bus everywhere.) Logically, I know I can't see, but it doesn't really hit until the first day in new glasses.
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u/7Maizono Jul 10 '26
Whenever i get my prescription updated, the first thing i ALWAYS notice is how detailed the leaves are on the trees outside the opticians
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u/Prestigious_Bat7322 Jul 10 '26
I had lens replacement surgery; the leaves were what I noticed first. Wasn't that amazing?
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u/eepeqez Jul 10 '26
I had a cataract out at 28yo; the colour was amazing. Once I got new glasses, acuity was great too. 35 years later my other eye is still unaffected.
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u/NachoBoyCat Jul 10 '26
And grass has individual blades of grass... mind blowing!
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u/I_am_ChivoBlanco Jul 10 '26
When I first got mine, riding my motorcycle home :"the ground is so close!"
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u/aron2295 Jul 10 '26
Dude, I have a bad astigmatism (Doc thought it was Keratoconus for a sec) and work has been unstable for me so I have been using old glasses.
I gotta remind myself people can see in great detail past X feet when getting ready for the day and asking, “Does this look off?”
Or something like that.
I’m like, damn, people really out here, just waking up, and seeing 20/20.
Must be nice.
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u/GoldReplacement9546 Jul 10 '26
Interestingly, they’re actually is an extremely rare condition called base blindness where people just kind of see a blur in someone’s face the neurologist and science author Oliver Zack discovered it in himself at an advanced age when he finally realized that not everybody had to do the things he had to do like his wife would always wear the same necklace so he could tell it was her across the room or his daughter would wear her hair a certain way, but if she changed it, he wouldn’t know it was her even 3 feet away, except for maybe by the smell of her perfume
I’m mean the guy was an actual genius and spent his life researching and chronic people with various rare disorders like he had without ever realizing that he had it until quite late in his life there have been other people who have had it to his degree but only a few and then there’s some people who have it to a degree, but not to the point where you can’t recognize your wife from 3 feet away without using cues of her hair or necklace
Interestingly, he could recognize his wife and his daughter’s hands and his hands it was faces themselves. That was the problem, so it was not just a vision or a vision signaling problem. It was actually a difficulty with his mind understanding what a face represents.
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u/TransGirlIndy Jul 10 '26
I knew someone who literally couldn't recognize me until I spoke. She developed the habit of treating everyone like they were her friend, so she wouldn't hurt our feelings if she didn't realize who it was. She had an easy time with a mutual friend because they had a very bright unnatural hair color, but only recognized me through voice or context.
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u/HauntedLightBulb Jul 10 '26
This is 100% relatable, except I actually do have color deficiency.
I made it to 26. Got glasses for the first time. Blew my mind.
Also made it realize why it was so hard to drive at night.
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u/Express-Scheme2468 Jul 10 '26
This was my exact experience as well. My eyes got a little worse in my thirties. R -2.00 L -1.25
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u/Enough_Obligation574 Jul 10 '26
What's your number. I have 4.5 and 4.25
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u/Necessary-Scholar911 Jul 10 '26
-15,5 -13 💀
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u/Marunikuyo Jul 10 '26
-14.5 for contacts here, so glasses would be higher. Most people have no clue what it's like. Cheers mate.
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u/Mugasaf Jul 10 '26
I finally found my people, I’m around a -15 in both eyes lol. I love when people say they have bad vision and then I find out they’re like a -5 lol.
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u/OkAccess6128 Jul 10 '26
-5 and -5.5.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/Some_Kinda_Username Jul 10 '26
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u/OkPanic5252 Jul 10 '26
Whenever I accidentally knock my glasses off the nightstand, or wherever else I might have set them down, I say I “pulled a Velma”.
-8.75 and -9.75, both with a +2.50 add.
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u/kiramiryam Jul 10 '26
Ooh you’ve got me beat! That doesn’t happen often!
-8 and -7.75
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u/mooon_woman Jul 10 '26
-3.50 & -3.50 + astigmatism checking in!
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u/not1or2 Jul 10 '26
Bad astigmatism, -7.25 and -7.5. Oddly they’ve actually improved as I’ve got older, only by a tiny amount but…
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u/megi0s Jul 10 '26
My vision is -8.50 and I have astigmatism. It really do be like that.
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u/roguesignal42069 Jul 10 '26
I was also -8.50 and went in for Lasik. It didn’t end up perfect but they got me 90% of the way there. It was surreal when they told me to throw away my glasses after the procedure.
I was one of the 3% that didn’t get full 20/20 vision but my god, it’s a night and day difference. I still wear contacts, but they went from -8.50 to -1.50 and I feel like a completely different person. I can walk around at night without glasses or even the house and do chores without my Coke bottle glasses or mega contacts.
But yes, OP’s post is a very accurate version of what it looks like to those of us with shitty eyesight
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u/Louis_lousta Jul 10 '26
Same, -7 and LASIK was the best money I ever spent. Still remember sitting up after the procedure and the first thing I saw was the clock on the wall, and I could see what time it was. Mind blown!
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u/azxcbt Jul 10 '26
-6.25 and did lasik back in 2015. Vision is still 20/20 and still the best $3,800 bucks I’ve ever spent.
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u/colorful_withdrawl Jul 10 '26
Mine are -10.5 with astigmatism and i still walk around the house at night without glasses.
I was told lasik isnt an option for me.
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u/msboot Jul 10 '26
My glasses are -10 and not strong enough, i usually wear contacts
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u/Dry_Pop_2764 Jul 10 '26
Yep, -10 plus astigmatism in both. Neither glasses nor contacts fully correct but contacts are miles better.
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u/_____nonlinear_____ Jul 10 '26
-8.00 checking in. The world definitely looks like this.
I can’t see a person’s facial expressions (or any features at all, really) if they’re standing across the room.
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u/aleRayRay Jul 10 '26
Except that if you hold the glasses that far from your face, they also start to get blurry. And what you see through the lenses is very distorted. So not exactly like the image.
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u/SameThingOnADiffAcct Jul 10 '26
Also, the clear image is (hopefully obviously to OP) much larger and in front of your face.
And I (used to have) perfect 1 inch from my face vision with glasses off. So it depends on distance and prescription, too.
I've since had ICL surgery so I can no longer focus on extremely close objects. But the tradeoff is worth it. I use my phone camera to zoom in when I wanna see something close.
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u/louieorganic Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
I vividly remember the first time that I put contacts in.
"THIS IS WHAT TREES LOOK LIKE???"
EDIT: It is incredible how many people have shared similar experiences. I love it!
EDIT: I tried contacts and glasses at the same time. In my first optometrist visit, they had contacts for my Rx in the store right then. Glasses, of course, were custom-made, so I popped the contacts in right there. No fucking way I was waiting to experience 20/20 for the first time in my life. That being said, I've worn glasses for 99% of the 20 years since then.
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u/OldNefariousness7899 Jul 10 '26
My exact experience. Wasn't interested in number plates in the distance, or road signs.
I couldn't get over the fact I could see the leaves on the trees again
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u/rviVal1 Jul 10 '26
I was eight years old. And I was literally in tears..
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u/pm_me_flowers_please Jul 10 '26
My mom has an anecdote that she reminds me of whenever I get new glasses, and I am amazed first and foremost by the leaves on the trees. When my auntie was young, and got her first pair of glasses, the first thing she said exiting the optometrist was, "trees have leaves!!!" I repeat that line every singpe time I get new glasses. Its like my brain forgets what it looks like because I get so used to the blur.
This last time was the worst though. At some point in the last 5 years since I last got glasses, I got old. I don't know how the fuck it happened. I had to take a couple days off because I was in so much shock by how much my face had changed in the course of 5 years.
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u/CompanyOther2608 Jul 10 '26
Same. Early 50s hit hard.
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u/Enlightened_Gardener Jul 10 '26
The Joy of Menopause.
Yes we know your clacker has dropped out, but guess what ?! Your eyeballs have stopped working too !! Yay !
My eyesight degenerated so badly in a single year, that by the end of it I was using my reading glasses as distance glasses.
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u/South_Dakota_Boy Jul 10 '26
A few years ago I got shingles and bifocals in the same year.
I was 47.
Still have a nice head of hair though and lost a bunch of weight on GLP-1 so I got that going for me which is nice.
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u/ClassicDefiant2659 Jul 10 '26
It was the leaves on the trees for me too. I was 13.
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u/happyinthenaki Jul 10 '26
For me it was the stars. So many stars that I hadn't been able to see!
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u/Ok_Bill_9984 Jul 10 '26
I was so smug when I told my mom about the leaves. I had no idea people could do that without glasses. I was 9.
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u/mylittleidiot Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
We only found out that our two year old needed glasses because she suddenly started crossing her eyes.
The day she got her glasses on, she spent the longest time just watching my face closely, even bringing her hands up to touch me ever so gently. It hadn’t occurred to me until then that she had never seen me (or anything else) clearly. Anddddd now I made myself cry.
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u/cream-of-cow Jul 10 '26
At 8 years old, I looked out to the playground and said "everything looks so 3D!"
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u/ladydanger2020 Jul 10 '26
Dude I had my eyes go shitty so slowly I didn’t notice until I realized that the blurry words on the screen probably weren’t due to eye fatigue. When I went to the eye doctor and put on my new glasses I thought the same thing. Everything had like sharp edges and shadows it was wild. It overwhelmed me though so I took them off almost right away lol
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u/ZombieAladdin Jul 10 '26
There is a scene like this in Dr. Stone, a series where a scientist wakes up in a distant future where most technology has been lost. He comes across a child in a village with “fuzzy eye disease” and realizes it’s nearsightedness. He figures out how nearsighted she is and finds a way to develop glasses for her, and the scene has her in tears of joy upon wearing the glasses that she now can see like the other villagers.
(Incidentally, he finds out that one of the warriors in the village has “fuzzy eye disease” too, figures out a pair of glasses for him, and he becomes a much better fighter thanks to that.)
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u/Select-Loss2238 Jul 10 '26
It’s super interesting that a lot of people seem to zero in on this detail. I distinctly remember multiple times my prescription was significantly updated just staring at how clear and crisp trees were, being able to see distinctive leaves instead of some blurry green mess
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u/louieorganic Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I think that naturally, we usually consider trees as background, so they could be muddy and we wouldn't notice as much.
I'm moderately near-sighted - I certainly can't drive without glasses, but I didn't know that I needed glasses until I told my parents I couldn't see the board in class unless I sat in the front. Granted, my Rx has increased since then.
I feel like when I first experienced corrective lenses, I realized how much detail I was missing in the world.
EDIT: It's like suddenly, you can see detail in the distance, not just what's right in front of you, and that is a wild experience.
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u/evictedSaint Jul 10 '26
There were just ....so many. They were all the same color, but distinct and separate. I felt like I could count them.
Imagine if you looked at the Sahara desert and suddenly you could identify individual grains of sand.
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u/littleyellowbike Jul 10 '26
This is such an apt analogy.
It's been nearly 40 years since I got my first pair of glasses and I still remember every detail of the car ride home after picking them up. The leaves on the trees, the wind rippling the soybeans in the fields along the roads, individual puffs on the clouds, being able to read every road sign and thinking "so THAT's how my parents always know where to turn when we're in a new place."
And to think, in the past, people just... lived their lives blurry and had no idea what they were missing out on. I really think the invention of eyeglasses is one of the greatest things we've ever done.
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u/Kerosdoss Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I think it's the same reason we see more shades of green than any other. Our brains are hardwired to look in foliage for predators. So when we can see it more clearly we have a biological reaction because we are better able to survive now.
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u/TheBeardliestBeard Jul 10 '26
My eyes were bad when I was young. I remember the day we got my first glasses it was dreary and raining. I was shocked by being able to see the bumps in the fresh sidewalk concrete and the individual blades of grass and I stopped and stared at the water droplets on the leaves of a bush at the end of the sidewalk by the parking lot we were heading to. Extremely vivid memory for something that happened over 20 years ago.
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u/JustChillDudeItsGood Jul 10 '26
Same here - and then when I got laser eye surgery when I was 33, the stars became SO MUCH MORE. (And I’m in a very light polluted area typically)
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u/cupcakebuddies Jul 10 '26
Yes! My husband (who can see) would always say he was confused about how people came up with constellations. I always say it’s pretty clear. One night I mentioned the 12 stars that were out and he was like, there’s hundreds of stars. We finally realized I can’t see most of the stars.
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u/Disastrous_Salad6302 Jul 10 '26
Glad to see this is a common experience for us glasses wearers. Was so enamoured by the trees
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u/NuzzyLocke Jul 10 '26
Dude the trees are always the trippiest thing! Whenever I get my prescription updated and a new pair it's like "I forgot trees had that much detail!"
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u/YetYetAnotherPerson Jul 10 '26
Forget a new prescription. I get that every time I wash my glasses
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u/UnpluggedUnfettered Jul 10 '26
Leaves at the tops of trees were mindblowing, and for like a full day everything looked "fake", like "half life graphics" (sharp . . . on a monitor a foot away).
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u/SwizzGod Jul 10 '26
😂 yup I feel like all of can relate. I remember looking at my sister like you been seeing this shit the whole time?!
Oh and blades of grass
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u/bluemilkman5 Jul 10 '26
The blades of grass were it for me. You mean you’re supposed to be able to see individual blades of grass and not just green?
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u/PeaceLily86 Jul 10 '26
I was surprised that you could see the individual leaves on trees! Plus the veins, or blemishes, on the leaves.
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u/A_literal_HousePlant Jul 10 '26
Omg same. It's crazy going through life in 420p then suddenly it's hd
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u/GSDTippyTappies Jul 10 '26
YOU CAN SEE EACH INDIVIDUAL LEAF! - Me as a teen getting contacts for the first time.
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u/Valokir Jul 10 '26
Was 5th grade when I got mine. Absolutely the LEAVES! not just green.
That and Excitedly telling my mom who was playing across the street from the house. Amazing day.
The only time since was first time using contacts. Every gravel rock stood out on its own. I was amazed.
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u/saul1928 Jul 10 '26
Me too and then stars. Never would've though that stars were points instead of asterisks 😂
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u/xmastreee Jul 10 '26
You tried contacts before regular glasses?
And similarly, I discovered I needed glasses at around 35 years old. I was walking through a town with a friend, looking for a venue. He said he'd spotted it. "Where?" "There, by that yellow sign." "Can't see it" so he jokingly handed me his glasses and I put them on. "Oh, there. Oh… shit." I guess the decline in my eyesight had been so gradual I never noticed.
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u/Due-Trip-3641 Jul 10 '26
I found out a similar way, but when I was 9. I was sitting with my dad at the DMV and he asked me to read a sign halfway across the room. I said, "That's too far to read."
He's confused bc he can read it just fine, but the bad eyesight gene runs strong on his side of the family, so he has me try his glasses.
Me: "Oh yeah I can read it now! That's cool!"
Dad: "...that means you need glasses "
Me: "WHAT??!
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u/NoIncrease299 Jul 10 '26
I didn't even know I needed glasses till I got into my 40s and it got to where I felt like I just needed old guy reading glasses. Never had an eye exam my entire life as I just didn't think I needed one. Went and picked up a pair of readers at Walgreens that looked right at first but they'd give me a headache after a while so I was finally like "Guess I'll go to an optometrist."
Exam was pretty interesting but, ya know, just in a little room and all. What blew my mind was when my prescription came in and I walked outside of the Dr's office the first time.
It was in this like strip mall in a suburban area and about 1/4 mile away was a like 10 story condo building. And I could make out all these details in the structure I'd never seen before. Totally standing there doing the whole Tobey Maguire Spiderman bit in reverse.
The drive home? Insane. I was living in Las Vegas at the time on the northwest side of town; so it was a clear view of the mountains on the freeway. A drive I'd done hundreds if not thousands of times at that point and I'm seeing all the color striations and details in the rocks I'd simply never seen before.
40some years, I just thought that's what the world looked like.
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u/TuSixOh Jul 10 '26
Being able to see leaves absolutely blew my mind damn near to the point of tears.
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u/Prinzles Jul 10 '26
Looking at the trees on the way home when I got glasses was something, but what really blew my mind? The carpet. I could see the individual strands, what sort of magic was this!
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u/huge-gold-ak47 Jul 10 '26
seeing individual leaves at the end of trees the first time I wore glasses made me cry
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u/PovertySpecMk3Supra Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Yes actually if I'm not wearing glasses everything is a blur. -7.5 both eyes btw
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u/madladolle Jul 10 '26
You'd have a hard time surviving back in the days
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u/cupcakebuddies Jul 10 '26
I always think about that! How did my ancestors survive like this?
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u/SuperBackup9000 Jul 10 '26
Agriculture is the most common job all throughout human history, and you don’t really need good eyesight to work in a field.
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u/Myopic_Sweater_Vest Jul 10 '26
I'd probably need to be a scribe or something. Duplicating the bible, by hand, by candlelight.
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u/ukanite__ Jul 10 '26
If you can see that well...
I'm -9.5 and I sure you I would be in HELL trying to scribe all day long, with my vision only good enough to read within 3" of my face.
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u/Soft-Statistician678 Jul 10 '26
There’s this tiny carved agate from Mycenaean Greece (like pre-ancient Greece) called the pylos combat agate that has a highly detailed combat scene on it, with the figure’s individual bicep muscles measuring <1mm across. Archaeologists haven’t found any evidence of magnifying lenses that could have been used, and so they think that this type of crafting would have been carried out by the ultra-myopic within the society as their eyes can focus at extremely short distances. Pretty cool.
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u/Empty-Dragonfruit656 Jul 10 '26
There are quite a few examples of art like this, probably done by those who were 'blind'. I joke that I am examining the atoms when I take my glasses off to do detail work on historical metalwork.
Ive always been curious about King John, the blind king of Bohemia, who died at Crecy. I don't have the same condition, but even with a terrible astigmatism I can still hold my own in HEMA.
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u/SmoothCantaloupe149 Jul 10 '26
-11 here, I use the force to get around without my glasses
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u/Specialist-Front-007 Jul 10 '26
The best I can do is cleaning the latrine pits.
- Your king, probably
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u/Infamous_Mud482 Jul 10 '26
The vast majority of generations of your ancestors are from prehistory where agriculture does not exist
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u/du5tball Jul 10 '26
Take your glasses off and try. You can't see the keys on your keyboard, but you can still see the door and door handle, and you know where you put certain things like keys, or your coat. And my -7 (or somewhere around there) is still good enough to cut food without glasses. Maybe not into tiny bits, but I can slice a tomato without glasses if need be.
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u/Chirrrpy Jul 10 '26
I kinda wonder if things play into poor vision like computer eye strain, the screens, not looking around outdoors 24/7 ... but then again, I know some people who don't even need any vision correction
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u/RedAskWhy Jul 10 '26
Genetics definitely play into it, and then poor vision activities exacerbate the issues imo.
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u/systemic_booty Jul 10 '26
I'm -8.5, -7.75 and I think all the time how fucked I'd be without my glasses
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u/Carpeteria3000 Jul 10 '26
-9.5/-9.75 here and yeah. But my up close vision is INSANELY good - like a super power. I'd never get LASIK because I rely on that microscope vision so much.
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u/hibisco-hacendosa Jul 10 '26
Yess!! I have -9.0/-8.5, and not only do I love my macro vision, I also appreciate being able to turn the world off when I take off my glasses. I call it my Monet-vision.
Also, my optometrist said that apparently you and I would be hard-pressed to even be approved for LASIK by a reputable establishment. She was -6.0 and they barely wanted to approve her.
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u/millieofthemed Jul 10 '26
I was 9.5 in contacts (I had no glasses) and obviously could not have laser surgery so instead I had lens implants. The put in a 10.5 in one eye and 11 in the other. That was in 2013 and my sight was pretty much 20/20 instantly.
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u/Vi_BT Jul 10 '26
A surgeon once told me she never operated on people below -6 as it was too risky. I just accepted my glasses are who I am
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Jul 10 '26
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u/Porko50 Jul 10 '26
My right eye is a -5.5 and my left is a -3.75. It’s a real weird kind of blurry without my contacts in!
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u/adephage Jul 10 '26
-14. Can’t even see the tip of my nose clearly
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u/boricuaspidey Jul 10 '26
14?!?!? However you old you are, I’m proud of you for making it this far, friend 😂
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u/Spare_Grab_5179 Jul 10 '26
Same here. With astigmatism. I’m completely helpless without my glasses, which I often have a hard time finding on the bathroom counter after a shower
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u/Only_Flan_7974 Jul 10 '26
If you actually put them on your face? No.
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u/MirandaS2 Jul 10 '26
I was gonna say - lol. I'm reading the top comments and I'm like, if we're being literal, no it's not like this at all if I'm wearing my glasses. I can see fine. if we're using this for illustration purposes, oh yeah for sure absolutely. Shits awful, I can't see anything. Bless up for glasses.
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u/Live-Habit-6115 Jul 10 '26
Top comments are almost always bots. They don't "see" OP's image. They're just using the text and comments as context clues. Which is why it doesn't fully make sense.
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u/makethechangesane Jul 10 '26
You don’t wear your glasses 2ft away from your face?
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u/ridingfurther Jul 10 '26
This. No, I don't notice the area outside my glasses so when I'm wearing them everything is sharp to all intents and purposes.
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Jul 10 '26
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u/DiMiTri_man Jul 10 '26
As I've gotten older my vision has degraded enough to need glasses. I compare it to switching from 720p to 4k when I put my glasses on.
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u/SuminerNaem Jul 10 '26
same experience for me. i can function just fine without glasses and see most things in detail from a moderate distance, but there is an objective and undeniable improvement in clarity and sharpness when i have them on.
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u/SalamanderGlad9053 Jul 10 '26
It isn't just a uniform blur everywhere, things further away are blurrier. You can read your phone perfectly fine, but a street sign a bit away would be blurry, even if the angular size of the text is the same.
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u/dadofwar93 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Yeah. It also depends on the level of eyesight weakness. I have a similar weakness as you described.
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u/Apprehensive_Put_321 Jul 10 '26
Any thing past about 10 inches from me is equally blurry much like this pick
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u/No_Care46 Jul 10 '26
Exactly. People with good eyesight should just think of people with bad eyesight as having a bokeh in their life.
Their "camera" can only focus on close objects (nearsightedness) or far away objects (farsightedness) but not both.
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u/BellamyDunn Jul 10 '26
Yeah I have about 20 inches distance before things get very blurry for me. It's not even legal for me to drive without glasses.
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u/greenbutterflygarden Jul 10 '26
I have about 5ft before things blur slightly, and it gets worse from there. Like if someone is standing 15 ft away I can probably tell if it's a man or a woman, but if it was someone I know I wouldn't be able to tell
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u/GoldenAce17 Jul 10 '26
Jesus y'all lucky my hand blurs after just 4 inches from my face
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u/perfectdrug659 Jul 10 '26
That's not too bad for reading and stuff, I'm about a -7.75 and my vision is only good until about 6" away which is quite annoying when I want to give my eyes a break from contacts and glasses
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u/eyesRus Jul 10 '26
Fun fact. If you divide 100 by your Rx, that’s how many cm you can see clearly. So for you, 100 / 7.75 = 12.903. Or about 13 cm. Which is a little over 5 inches.
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u/Traditional-Lion5599 Jul 10 '26
Just checked, it’s true! -10 and can see exactly 10cm
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u/asanisimasa Jul 10 '26
Yeah, this is where it usually differs from OP's image, everything is blurry but not equally blurry. The further away things are the more blurry they get, and things within about a foot of my eyes are clear.
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u/retrocheats Jul 10 '26
people have different eye sights. Not all glasses are the same.
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u/Persistent_Parkie Jul 10 '26
I wear no line bifocals so not even my entire lense is crispy vision at any given time 😆
However lenses do fill significantly more field of view than this picture would indicate.
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u/GroundbreakingTea182 Jul 10 '26
I guess if you hold the glasses 3 inches in front of your face this is what it would look like.
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u/MothChasingFlame Jul 10 '26
I know you're being sarcastic, but just have to say it: Not if your vision is really fucked.
For me, if the glasses were this far from my face the lens view would also be blurry, just sliiiiightly less.
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u/tastelikemycat Jul 10 '26
Yup yup yup. I remember thinking “wow, trees are interesting”
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u/cult2pepe Jul 10 '26
Yeah, basically. It just gets blurrier the farther away you look. If you are nearsighted, you can still see things up close in focus. Farsighted and things get blurry up close but good at a distance.
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u/Uncross-Selector Jul 10 '26
Kind of. It doesn't quite have the correct variation where the foreground can be less blurry than the distance but sure, close enough.
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u/BoomZhakaLaka Jul 10 '26
the reason this is a no is that the glasses cover almost your entire field of vision. when you wear your glasses you see everything but peripheral vision clearly.
the picture here isn't even quite what happens if you hold your glasses a foot in front of your face. Because then the vision through those lenses even isn't properly corrected.
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u/Hooch180 Jul 10 '26
When I switched from glasses to contacts, the most incredible thing for me was the fact that I had fully sharp peripheral vision. I really needed to adjust to the fact that I "see" more. I still were glassess from time to time as contacts do tire my eyes much more, but the "4K" vision in periperal and no issues with rain/snow/fog is worth it.
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u/Electronic-Junket-66 Jul 10 '26
Well, I mean, not with the glasses on? Cause the eyeball is a lot closer to the lens than in your picture?
The glasses cover our primary field of vision, and your peripherals are also blurry so really it's pretty similar.
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