My Naked Eye

Four months ago in August of 2025, I had a corrective surgery for my vision, in which lenses were implanted inside my eyes (ICL). Many of my questions/concerns regarding the surgery had been answered by research/medical literature which is a big reason why I decided to proceed with the operation. However, there were subjective aspects of life that I couldn’t get answered before the surgery. Now that I’m living in the post-glasses world, it’s been fun to revisit some of these questions and note some aspects of naked eyes that I didn’t expect! 

I miss the ability to take my glasses off and slip into my own world in ANY situation. 

Have I been overstimulated by seeing clearly all the time? 

One of the few superpowers of having glasses-corrected vision was having the ability to take my glasses off whenever I wanted to retreat from the world. Without the ability to see clearly, I could dissociate/space out and take time in the middle of the day to recharge. 

Luckily for me, I’ve realized that even folks with good vision are able to unfocus their eyes, disregard visual signals, and zone out as needed 🙂 

However, I did actually have several days immediately after my surgery where I experienced visual overstimulation! My eyes were just looking at EVERYTHING all the time and I couldn’t help it. After about a week, my brain and eyes kinda gave up and there were a few days where it was actually really hard to get my eyes to focus on anything at all. During those days I was moving around my house without actually looking at anything with focus which was a bit surreal. 

Do I miss the ability to take my glasses off?

Nope ! 

I’m so happy to not be required to put glasses on my face every day just to perform basic functions. Overall, I’m surprised to experience eyes that are far more fallible than I had realized. I knew that glasses were really useful for a couple reasons.

Firstly, to focus the light entering my eyes.
Secondly, to reduce glare and UV light hitting my eyes.
And thirdly, to give my brain a clear separation between ‘focus time’ and ‘glazed over’ time (where I’m zoned out).

I knew that there would be some difficulties adjusting to a world where I don’t need glasses. However, my vision has consistently been playing with my brain in unexpected ways ! Here are a few things

1. Hand-eye coordination. While this has improved in the months post-surgery, it was surprising to find a game of catch challenging. Even my high fives were awful until recently!
2. The dynamic nature of seeing – I’ve noticed more consciously how achieving a crisp image is a multi-step process. When it goes well, an image starts out of focus, and the blurred edges quickly sharpen into defined lines. However, vision in low light can take much more time to come into focus. Sometimes images only come into focus if i have tears in my eyes, Due to my astigmatism, there are certain shapes (especially with text at distance) that never properly come into focus.
3. My right eye’s vision has some uncorrected astigmatism, so when my eyes try to focus on an object, it might appear clear at the top and bottom, but blurry on the sides. I’ve noticed my right eye actively trying to re-focus the side blurriness and sometimes it succeeds! It’s fun (and annoying) to see text come in and out of focus as my eyes do their best – here’s hoping for faster focusing in the years to come!
4. Noticing differences in vision between my eyes is really trippy! My vision has never been the same between my two eyes, but both eyes were so bad that I never noticed a difference in visual quality between them. Now that I’ve had my surgery, it’s very clear that one eye has been corrected better than the other, and it bothers me much more than I expected. 
5. Halos around lights are expected side effects from the surgery, and while they don’t actively bother me, it’s not something my brain happily ignores. There’s always a moment when I look at a bright light that I notice the large halo around the light before I can ignore it. 
6. Night vision is rough, computer light is rough, daylight is rough – glasses really do be doing the most ! I bought my first pair of sunglasses but I keep forgetting to take them with me on my outdoor expeditions. I haven’t bought a pair of computer glasses or night-time glasses yet, but I think I will eventually. My glasses eased the visual strain on my eyes more than I realized! 

For me, the surgery was a worthwhile decision to make – I  can do more watersports, I don’t need to worry about losing an expensive living aid, my nose and ears are happier every day! But my imagined self and actual self (post-surgery) experience the world through different eyes, and that difference is non-trivial! I think surgeries generally fulfill their promise, but they also bring unexpected changes to our experience of the world. If facing elective surgeries in the future, I’ll have to find ways to stay grounded in this knowledge instead of getting carried away in my natural optimism.