Lessons from new spectacles

I got new glasses today. It intrigues me. They cost over five hundred dollars. I can buy off the shelf reading glasses with similar frames for twenty dollars or less! Somebody is ripping somebody off? But you have to have them. I have been sitting here playing with my old glasses and my new ones to see how they compare. I am pleased with the improvement all around. By comparing I found out three things.
My old glasses are scratched and dirty.
Without me really noticing it my old glasses had got scratched and dirty in a way that no amount of cleaning could change. The non-glare coating was coming off and the resultant smudge was distorting my vision.  - I got to thinking how many experiences in life have distorted my vision or understandings without me noticing?
My eyes have changed since my old glasses were prescribed.
In my new glasses things at are distance are now clearer. (my distant vision has improved) My reading vision through my new glasses is better too. My two eyes had become different and had deteriorated in terms of my short vision. (They are progressive lenses)  - Sometimes we have to throw out the "old glasses" and put on the new to see more truly in life. The old ways of seeing things no longer fit our experiences of life.
I can see and notice so much more of the world around me.
In my new glasses, I am noticing detail that I used to miss in my old glasses. The detail was always there, but I was not seeing it. Sometimes with the "glasses" (attitudes, perspectives and limitations) we choose to put on in life we fail to see reality that is there to be seen. I was talking to a prison chaplain today and she says she prefers not to know what crime the prisoners she talks to did to get them imprisoned. She said that if she knew it would colour her way of seeing them. She prefers to get to know them as a person, before she knows their crime, "then" she said, "you see the real person more clearly." Often because of the categories we choose to view the world with, we fail to see clearly all there is to see.