I remember back in middle school telling my mom that I was having trouble seeing the whiteboard in class. At the time she worked in ophthalmology (and still does today actually), so naturally I ended up getting a prescription for contacts to wear at school.

I wore them for maybe eight months to a year. But toward the end of that time I started noticing something strange - when I took the contacts out, my vision actually seemed worse than before. Not to mention the pure agony of dealing with them every day. Getting them in and out of my eyes was such a pain.

Around that time I somehow came across the work of Aldous Huxley, specifically his book The Art of Seeing. What many people don’t realize is that Huxley was nearly blind by the age of 18. He later worked with a doctor Bates, who developed methods aimed at restoring vision through natural practices.

The book goes into techniques meant to reduce strain on the eye muscles and allow the eyes to relax and function properly again. This stood in stark contrast to the general consensus in the ophthalmology world, which tends to treat declining vision as something permanent that simply needs correction with lenses.

Reading that book completely changed how I thought about vision.

I stopped wearing contacts and began practicing some of the ideas Huxley discussed. Over time my eyesight improved. I haven’t worn contacts in well over a decade now, and my vision has continued to get better. It’s not perfect 20/20, but it’s very close and ophthalmology tests have verified that my vision is solid.

The bigger point for me is this: the body has an incredible ability to heal itself when you give it the right conditions. Curiosity matters. Questioning orthodox assumptions matters even more so.

Sometimes the solutions aren’t about adding more intervention, but they’re about removing stress and allowing the body to do what it already knows how to do.