Ways of Seeing

unemployment update; or, a productive summer

I’ve grown more comfortable with my blurry eyesight as of late.

Since the tender age of 8, I’ve had a pair of spectacles on my face. In a household with a younger brother who started wearing his even before I did, “Wear your glasses!” was a command that was drilled into me early on. Virtually everyone I met then—optometrists, nurses at school health checkups, and most of all my mum—often explained to me that wearing my glasses would prevent my eyesight from growing worse, and of course I listened. Wearing them was easy, anyway. I hated the strain when seeing the blurry outlines of objects, so, unlike my brother who often didn’t bother to wear his (thus the ceaseless reminders), my combination of myopia and astigmatism bothered me enough to for me to always seek out the respite of 20/20 vision in my pair of spectacles.

My eyesight still did get a bit worse over the years anyway, due to bad habits. Only taking them off in the shower and when I slept, I wore my glasses all the time, yes, even when I played volleyball (I still do). My teammates over the years will probably remember the numerous times my glasses flew off my face or were smashed by a well- (or badly? who knows) aimed ball. One of my university friends has successfully done it twice in two years. Why didn’t I just switch to contacts? (I probably will do that soon…) My mum was worried I would take a ball to the face and the impact on the contact lens would give me a corneal injury. I know a shattered lens headed for my eyeball sounds way worse, but hey, that’s never happened and she has a Ph.D in the biological sciences so I listened (and still am listening) to her. I don’t take my glasses off.

Yet, I have been playing volleyball without them for the past four weeks.

Granted, I was forced to—the burning hot sun hanging high above the beach and no contact lenses and meant I had to make the choice between seeing something with sunglasses and (ironically) seeing nothing with prescription glasses. Despite requiring a bit of effort and adapting (at times my depth perception disappeared), I got used to it and now do just fine.

Change

I harbour a dislike for change. I feel it the most during the moments right before (that somehow always requires an insurmountable effort) and right after (usually a pesky feeling of mild discomfort, like a piece of stray gravel lodged in the ridge of your shoe sole when you walk). So I stick to my habits like a stubborn mule. “There’s so many things you can write about regarding your exchange experience—there must be so many new feelings you want to make sense of,” a friend of mine had said. In truth, I don’t think there was anything significant enough about my experience that I could categorise as life-changing that I want to pour into my writing. Yes, I vividly remember my exhilarated wonder as I traversed the streets of Rouen and Prague and Seville solo, my panic as I missed my intercity bus in Portugal and my pensive, broken-hearted relief as a boyfriend and I parted ways on the last leg of our long-distance relationship. While fresh in my memory, none of these truly challenged or pushed me out of my comfort zone—I’ve always done things independently and have long ago learnt to relish my solitude. My exchange experience has been nothing short of amazing and fun and easy, in part of how I had run its operations within my comfort zone.

Funnily enough, what was outside of that bubble, was actually going for a yoga class when I came back home to Singapore. My inveterate introversion that enabled me to feel right at home in a crowd and find enjoyment in travelling alone, despised sharing an enclosed, more intimate space with other people. I didn’t even like to do at-home exercises in front of my own family. The thought of it made me feel hyperaware and self-conscious, and was enough to deter me from ever trying out a new activity in a class-setting. There was always some sort of self-imposed shame attached to any expressive movement of my body, some insecurity that I would look stupid because I didn’t know what I was doing.

Yet, in my first ever summer in 3 years with no internship, I found myself signing up for a ClassPass free trial. Despite my occasional dogged stubbornness against change, a part of me really wanted to (for the lack of a better word) force myself into an exposure-therapy-esque situation. The choices were endless. I ended up picking Yoga, Boxing, Pilates. Don’t get me wrong, I still did feel the familiar slight sense of reluctance the night before each new class. But the time for the class would always come (I did my best to not cancel, and ClassPass makes you pay money if you cancel less that 12 hours before and even more if you miss the class), and I always found myself enjoying the class and everyone’s kind welcome. Even though I have to admit that watching people engage in a furious fit of shadow-boxing can be a little bit funny to the untrained eye, everyone in every class was always too focused on their own performance to ever judge mine. At least, that’s what it felt like. (And that’s all I need, really.) My anxieties and shame slowly melted away.

I took part in all those classes without ever putting my glasses on. While this was initially done out of pragmatism (nobody wants to take that risk especially in a boxing class), taking off my glasses has made me more aware of newer ways of seeing: seeing the bigger picture and ‘seeing’ with my body. With the blurry image of the volleyball in the air, I become even more aware of its whole: its direction, speed and movement. Without focusing too much on the details, I grew to rely on and fine-tune my proprioception. I react and respond to the movements of my sparring partner. I feel my abdomen contract and relax as I breathe in and out on the reformer machine, the unexpected burn in my hip flexors betraying their weakness. On the yoga mat, I close my eyes, listening to my instructor, making sure to align my spine, lift my hips and ground my ten knuckles when in downward dog. I work at becoming more mindful of my movements, and I learn to function in a more holistic manner. Unfortunately, I still am not flexible enough to plant my heels flat when doing downward dog. Recently, however, I’ve found myself becoming aware of my posture mid-run and self-correcting my running form. I suppose all of this is doing something.

In my life, I am constantly surrounded by highly ocular disciplines—in school I do art history, for work I teach children to draw, and (not to forget!) for leisure I watch movies and scroll Instagram reels. Sight has enjoyed a long-standing privilege in the hierarchy of the senses, especially in the western tradition that has become global hegemony. We all live in a world visually abundant to the point of gross excess—in Ways of Seeing John Berger expounds: “[i]n no other form of society in history has there been such a concentration of images, such a density of visual messages.” I love my eyesight; by no means am I discounting its importance. I’ve been able to see so much of the world and channeled it into my hobbyist photography. This time, however, forcing myself to step outside of my comfort zone, to change, has enabled me to become more in touch with my bodily senses as an interconnected whole.

Consistency

Aside from change, the other ‘C’ outside my comfort zone is consistency (sorry, so lame). Off the top of my head, the only good habit I can say I’ve every inculcated myself would probably just be wearing my retainers every night. My first and last Substack entry was on writing (with the spirit of an amateur, but also with consistency), yet I’ve been ruminating on this draft for the past two weeks with neither adequate motivational force nor easily-flowing words to get writing. I’ve begun to read for fun again, finishing Crime and Punishment but am still yet to complete the much simpler The Goodbye Cat. I kind of want to, but I haven’t been back to either boxing or pilates. I thrive off of instant gratification. It’s easier to choose the path of least resistance—I’ve made it easier for myself by finding and choosing the things I like —and have been back to yoga for three classes. To suit my whims and fixations, I think the consistency I will work towards, will be about learning and doing new things. Some of my friends call it my side quests. Reading, writing, yoga, pilates, boxing, drawing, crochet, volleyball, learning to solve Rubik’s cubes, (finally) running more than 3km in one go, watching an art-house film that I usually wouldn’t with friends, using my own CDC vouchers for the very first time…

For many times this summer, I’ve felt as though I was missing out on (SO MANY) professional connections and opportunities. In Year 3, many of my friends are doing internships and cool extracurriculars that are CV-worthy, while I was regrettably that unemployed friend on a Tuesday afternoon. However, as the holidays begin to come to a close, I’m glad to gain another perspective and even more content to have done things at my pace this year. In a rather unassuming and maybe even insignificant manner, I’ve rediscovered a new balance in my senses, my habits and my being. There are many ways of seeing, of perceiving. How funny that I should title this entry after Berger’s book that formed the basis of my Year 1 visual culture class. I suppose this is somewhat a full-circle moment as I grow and enter into my final year of undergraduate studies.

Pleasantly, my unemployed summer has by far been my most productive.

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It is now 04:19am. I’ve written, read, posted, re-read, felt unsatisfied, re-edited, re-updated, re-read, re-edited… Phyllis read the old version that was published 45 minutes ago. Please re-read this newer and better version, Phyllis. Thanks and I love you.

Here’s to building healthier, more consistent sleeping habits. No need for glasses there. Goodnight, everyone.