Sometimes, people love to romanticize about what it would have been like to have lived in the past. We watch movies about historical periods, we watch Braveheart, Robin Hood, or Ride with the Devil, and imagine what life would have been like, back then.
We look at men with beards or fierce hair-cuts, mostly clean and with flawless teeth; we watch emancipated women, uttering anachronistic terms like “gender,” walking effortlessly in dresses in all colors of the rainbow.
In the middle of all these carefully choreographed battle scenes and orchestrated social interactions, I can’t help but think that I would be rather helpless in the distant past. After all, I need glasses to see the world around me, and although corrective lenses have been around for a while, I doubt that they were widespread and as carefully tuned as they are now. So I would be short-sighted and, with of the big difference in sight between my both eyes (left -7,5; right -5), I would suffer migraines so frequently, I would be rendered useless in society.
Although my fascination is with the first half of the 19th century, I am very glad to have been born in this day and age. Not only do I live a fulfilling life, with corrected sight and mostly free from severe headaches, I also get to share my thoughts on this online medium. No need to scream loudly and lift my kilt, for me to get your attention.
