Reference News Network reported on February 27 (text/Frank Bruni)
One morning a few years ago, I woke up with a particularly blurred vision. After that, the doctors quickly identified the problem: I had a stroke, a very rare type. Overnight, it destroyed the optic nerve behind the eyeball in my right eye.
Worst-case scenario? The left eye will go on like this, and that will blind me.
Best-case scenario? Slightly better. Greatly improved. But I'll never see as clearly as I used to.
The people around you become clear
Indeed, my eyesight is much less than before. The right side of my vision was always covered with a layer of mist, like waiting for the sun that would never rise. Sometimes, I confuse the exact position of an object relative to. So when I should type out "live," I often type out "love," and when I should type out "love," I often type out "live." On the keyboard, the letters "i" and "o" are adjacent. And my perception of depth will become less normal. In the months after my stroke, the people who asked me to pour him wine attested to that. I would pour out their glasses and spill the wine on their legs.
I don't pour wine anymore. I was annoyed. I live in anxiety and wish my left eye would hold up. It did hold up, and there was a stroke of luck that the doctors hadn't anticipated: little by little, the people around me became clearer, and I mean, I gradually saw their fears, their struggles, their triumphs.
"Plane crash, prosthetics, loss of 8-year-old son." A writer who worked out at the same gym as me in Manhattan encountered this. This is a brief summary of a sad story. Flying a plane was a hobby of his, and when the plane he flew crashed, the only passenger on board— his only son — died. He nearly lost his second leg and spent the next five months at the rehabilitation center. I didn't know all this from him personally, but from his acquaintances, and only after many optimistic and enthusiastic chats with him. In the chat with him, he did not show any signs. I was shocked and ashamed.
"Debilitating headaches, constant screaming, frequent suicidal thoughts." This is all that happened to a celebrity who had confided in me his secrets, and I suspect that anyone who coveted the man's wealth and fame would not be willing to swap identities with him, at least not with those conditions. These revelations made me awe-inspired, because these revealers are still forging ahead.
Some of the labels hanging on others I can easily read because now I read the world very differently, and some are hung on me by others, and they know my own labels ("visually impaired, possibly blind"). I don't have to force people with troubles to share experiences. These will be revealed little by little when they are inadvertent, and I just need to be sensitive enough to grasp the details.
I'll continue to pay attention to comments that I might have ignored before and keep some conversations going, whereas in the past I may have rushed to end or bypass those topics. At one of the universities I visited and gave a speech, someone mentioned the health problems of the rector's wife; later, when I met her, I gently asked about the relevant matters and learned that she had survived many days when those around her were unaware of her, and she had survived a sharp back pain.
The manager of a restaurant in Las Vegas recognized me, and it was after reading an article I wrote about my own vision crisis. He confided in me that he had a lifelong vision problem; I later contacted him and learned his whole story. It's an unusual story of tribulation and achievement. This is a lesson about perseverance and positive thinking. It made me look at myself in perspective and not be so bothered.
Learn from pain
After I have seen and read so much, I have learned revelation or allegory from the secrets hidden by others and the pain I have endured. When the famous economist Alan Kruger committed suicide in 2019, I felt this.
I once interviewed Kruger. His demeanor was pleasant and the interview was comfortable, which surprised me. Interviews are often stressful, but the experience was different.
I'm going to tell you a secret from my journalism career, a secret that foreshadows the self-doubt and cowardice that will affect me for the rest of my life: I have to stabilize my emotions before I pick up the earpiece and call my interviewee. I had to take a few deep breaths. I worry that I'm asking the wrong question or not asking the right question. Worrying about being stupid and asking questions is embarrassing. If the person I'm interviewing is famous or highly respected and qualified, I'm intimidated. Many interviews at 11 a.m. began at 11:02 a.m., and many interviews scheduled for 3 p.m. began at 3:03 a.m. It's not because I'm sloppy procrastinating. This is because I need to take this extra time to take a deep breath, which is precious and worthy of my apologies for my delay.
But I remember I called Alan Kruger on time. We sent back and forth a few emails before the call and his amiable and approachable attitude calmed me down. An economist who was teaching at Princeton University at the time, Kruger served as chairman of the Economic Advisory Board under Barack Oba President Ma. He did pioneering research on the impact of raising the minimum hourly wage, and he determined that this would not lead to a decline in hiring and a decline in employment.
Attractively, he also used the data to draw conclusions about pain and happiness. He found that unemployment is more than just emotional distress. Men looking for work also prompt physical pain and take more painkillers. As for happiness, according to his analysis of survey data, one of the best ways to enhance happiness is to spend time with friends. He often attends social gatherings to overcome the fatigue of a week at work.
I talked to him at the end of 2014. I was writing a book about Americans' attachment to top universities like Princeton. It happened that spring that I was a visiting professor at Princeton University. Krueger and mathematician Stacy Dyer studied a large number of data on the economic benefits generated by attending elite universities, and they determined that this economic benefit was overestimated. Kruger's email address was public, so I wrote him an email asking if he would like to talk to me on the phone about the study. As an ice-breaking topic and a means of persuasion, I mentioned that I briefly served as a visiting professor at Princeton University.
He quickly wrote back and said, "You can lecture in my class at any time!" He was happy to discuss his research, but he apologized that it wasn't okay at the time because he was in Italy, and after the trip to Italy, he would have been busy for a few days, busy with his daughter's college graduation. He asked, "Can we talk about next Wednesday or Thursday?" Will it be too late? "I clearly felt that if I said I couldn't wait, he would definitely find a way to match my time.
I told him I could next Wednesday. Later, we had a conversation and he was so polite, too pleasant, too patient and fantastic. He talked about my book, which will be published the following year. Whenever I see Kruger's name on the news — and I often see it, because he's very generous to reporters — a warm feeling comes over me; I'm even a little hooked on him. Articles mentioning him are sometimes accompanied by photographs that show that in addition to being talented and kind, he is handsome. Some people have it all.
After Kruger's death, Obama issued a statement recalling that Kruger possessed an "eternal smile and gentlemanly spirit — even when he corrected you." The Nobel Laureate economist paul Krugman and a columnist for The Times, who taught with Kruger at Princeton University, wrote: "I knew Alan, but I never found any sign that this could happen. ”
Betsy Stevenson, who succeeded Kruger as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, made a barrage of tweets. In it, she mentioned Kruger's research on pain. She wrote: "Now, I know that he is also suffering, perhaps to divert his own pain, and he thinks about the pain of others. ”
She added: "The truth is that all of us suffer more than the outside world knows. (Hu Jing translated from the New York Times website on February 15, originally titled "Vision Loss Makes Me See More Clearly")
Source: Reference News Network