Pineridge Blog

There we were in March peacefully floating together down the river of 2020 when all of a sudden we were caught off guard by a pan-demic; a quarantine; now confrontation with a long history of racial injustice and this week the landmark Su-preme Court decisions which more fully recognize our LGBTQ+ and DACA Dreamer brothers and sisters. All of a sudden we are getting splashed and steer-ing to avoid looming rocks. History is roaring around us. It is exhausting, exciting and scary. We wonder where it all will end up.
20/20 is also a phrase optometrists use to describe normal vision. Good human eyesight is being able to see something clearly at 20 feet in both eyes--20/20 vision.

Several years ago I had what was then called a “young per-son’s cataract.” At the age I am now it would probably just be called “a cataract,” but that’s another story. I remember going in for the surgery, nervous about what it might mean. The doc-tor really took his time. In just 10 minutes he removed my cloudy, diseased lens and put in a shiny new plastic one. Im-mediately I went from something like 20/100 vision to 20/20. I can still remember that it took my brain a while to catch up with the change. I was off balance a bit because things just looked different. Colors were surprisingly vibrant. I noticed details I had previously missed. I had not even realized how much my vision had deteriorated over time.

This is a moment we have an opportunity to see things more clearly. The pandemic has suddenly reminded us of the fragili-ty of life, the preciousness of health, the warmth of a friend’s hug. The murder of George Floyd has held up a mirror to truly see who we are as a society. Systemic discrimination is not a good look as we see details we had missed before. People could still be fired for being gay, deported for being brought to the US as undocumented children, or murdered just for being Black? Really? In 2020? Colors are more brilliant. The vibrancy or the diverse crowds peacefully protesting weaves a beautiful tapestry around the world. Our brains struggle to catch up. History is roaring around us. It is exhausting, exciting and scary. We wonder where it all will end up.