What is the first book you remember reading?

Several come to mind right away for me. The first is Pinduli, a picture book by Janell Cannon that followed the adventures of a little hyena across the East African savanna. I distinctly recall loving how round the ears were on the African wild dogs and how exciting it was to see such a unique animal in a picture book. Cannon also wrote Stellaluna, another picture book with equally stunning illustrations, about a baby fruit bat. Shoutout to her (and the Kratt brothers) for introducing me to the wonderful world of weird animals through children’s media.

I graduated to reading chapter books pretty quickly. I was gripped by the initial awe of discovering medieval fantasy stories as I devoured book after book in the Redwall series by Brian Jacques (these absolutely hold up). Shelf after shelf in my elementary school library, I tore through everything I could get my hands on. I spent hours absorbed by the magical adventures in the Septimus Heap series and the Harry Potter books (mandatory “fuck you JK Rowling”). I remember the excitement that came with reading my first ever “scary” stories, the thrill of staying up late to see what happens next in stories like Coraline and The Graveyard Book, books that I revisited often in my adulthood (mandatory “fuck you Neil Gaiman, we literally cannot have anything good in this world anymore”). It didn’t matter what it was, I just keep reading.

With a decently strict bedtime routine well into my middle school years, I became quite good at smuggling books into my room and reading by a tiny flashlight under the blankets. Every time my dad inevitably found out, the lecture would come about how I was straining my eyes and how no amount of carrots would be able to fix my vision if I kept reading after dark. I am not sure if he was right about lowlight-reading causing irreparable damage to my vision or if poor eyesight just ran in the family, but by the start of third grade I needed my first pair of glasses. Ever since, my eyesight has steadily worsened.

It became tradition that at the beginning of every school year, I would take an eye exam at the America’s Best in town and pick out a new pair of eyeglasses. By the end of the school year, my vision would have worsened enough to land me in the front row of my classrooms and squinting to see the whiteboard again and again. Rinse and repeat. At the time, I had no idea how privileged I was to have access to something that seems so normal, so necessary.

As my eyesight worsened, corrective lenses have become a non-negotiable. The seemingly half-inch thick lenses with a -9 degree power in my aviator style glasses frames are the only things allowing me to see the iPad that is literally sitting two feet in front me. When I lift my glasses off my face, I unfortunately can no longer tell how many fingers you are holding up. In fact, if you aren’t moving, I probably can’t even tell that you are a human, just a blob of color in the background. I can see at 20 feet what someone with “normal” (20/20) vision would see at 200 feet. That big ‘ol E at the top of the Snellen chart might as well not even exist without my glasses or contacts.

Like many other things I need to survive, my access to affordable corrective lenses is dependent on and beholden to my employer. Without vision insurance, at my prescription, a pair of glasses can easily cost anywhere from $400 to $600 out of pocket, not including exams. Now that I am finally old enough to be booted off my parents’ insurance plans, I needed to take a look at what my employer offered in the way of vision benefits. Insurance language has always felt so dystopian to me— part of how I am being compensated for my labor is my employer making it more affordable for me to literally be able to see. Thanks? I guess?

Vision insurance, you also may have noticed, remains distinctly separate from health insurance providers. This is because in the 50s, getting eye-care and glasses was seen as going through a “speciality craft,” not a medical necessity. But in today’s day and age, I can’t imagine navigating the world without access to some kind of vision correction or the exams necessary to catch conditions such as glaucoma or cataracts that are becoming more and more common due to an increasingly digital world.

My employer notified me that the almighty Insurance Provider will be changing this year and to familiarize ourselves with the new benefits plan. It seemed this was in my favor— my last eye exam was just six months ago in August, but I am already struggling to see out of my glasses again. Under my last plan, I would have needed to wait another year and a half for a new exam and prescription. While going through the details, I realized that without also being on a parent’s insurance plan, I would only be covered for either eyeglasses or contact lenses every two years. That couldn’t be right, could it? I did what any other adult would do and called my mom.

I complained to her about how bullshit all of this was and why I was going to need to set aside close to a thousand dollars for new contacts and glasses to last me two years. I expected sympathetic outrage to corroborate how something must have been wrong, but instead after my ten minutes of ranting I just heard my mom laugh at the other end of the line.

I learned from her that the every two year thing is common for vision insurance. Coverage for glasses has pretty much always been like that. What? So my parents had to pay out of pocket every other year for their children to be able to see because vision insurance didn’t cover it? Both my parents wore glasses themselves (again, poor vision runs in the family) and had three kiddos wanting both contacts and glasses? How much fucking money were they spending just for us to be able to consistently see? Was “eyesight” just was a budget line item for them? Am I the only one really out of touch here, because that feels absolutely wild to me. I really had no idea how lucky we were to just be able to start the school year every year with the ability to read the board clearly.

Naturally, these “benefits” don’t just magically plop a pair of new glasses in your lap. My new insurance plan graciously covers up to $200 for a pair of eyeglasses or up to $150 worth of contact lenses. This is a nice 50% off coupon for what I actually need covered for my glasses and the contacts coverage really only covers a six month supply. With either of these benefits being available every two years, I am looking at almost $500 out of pocket for the two years worth of contacts that I will need before my benefits reset.

I am still a little astounded that none of this is news. Over the phone, my mom was surprised that I was so upset. A few hundred dollars every couple years to be able to see really isn’t that bad when you zoom out. Especially considering how much more fucked up this conversation gets when you start looking at how expensive it is to access necessary medical equipment for more severe disabilities and conditions despite the increased reliance on insurance companies. But considering that wearing corrective lenses is actually extremely common, despite early 2000s television tropes, I can’t help but wonder why it is still so expensive.

According to The Vision Council, which produces 90% of the prescription lenses worn in the U.S., over 75% of adult Americans use vision correction. $500 is no small feat when you are working part time or are unemployed. It is easily a few months of groceries for a small household, or a car payment, or hell even a good chunk of rent. Millions of people go through this same process every year, fork up cash to be able to see, and move on with their lives because what else are you going to do? Not be able to see?

In the spirit of identifying seemingly normal things that re-radicalize me upon the slightest amount of reflection, I want to share with you that last year, the U.S. optical industry grew 2.7% over the previous year achieving a total market value of $68.3 billion. One fucking insurance company covers nearly 71% of everyone needing vision insurance through all of its subsidiaries and reported earning $1.692 billion in the first three quarters of 2023 alone.

With that context, I find it hard for me laugh when my partner holds up my centimeter thick ultra high index glasses to his face and we usually make some kind of joke about natural selection if glasses were never invented. Because the reality is, along with many medical needs that are paywalled from the people who need it most, how many millions of people just don’t have those couple hundred bucks to throw at glasses every year and end up suffering at the hands of a multi-billion dollar industry?

Now, tug on that thread just a little bit more. Consider one of the medical factors that contribute to the development of myopia and other eye-conditions that would require exams, treatment, or vision correction: diabetes. The risk of blindness is 25 times higher for those with diabetes yet CDC reports from last year show that 60% of people diagnosed with diabetes do not get annual eye-exams. It is very well known that, for a myriad of reasons that are both intentional and unintentional consequences of a white supremacist, imperialist government, Native Americans are the most impacted demographic group by diabetes across the board. The effects are compounded.

It is difficult for me to sit with how expensive it is to update my glasses every year because of how disgustingly malicious it feels that underserved communities who already struggle to access the healthcare they deserve and need have to also go through these insurance hoops to be able to see. Which kids at school didn’t get new glasses every year and just had to deal with squinting at the board? How did it affect their education? How does that impact their projected economic security or mobility after school, or their access to insurances that offer them affordable healthcare? And then the system has the audacity to be surprised at health problems, early deaths, and the inability to just pull oneself up by those god damned bootstraps. I cannot look at a $400 pair of glasses and not see the cycle of poverty being intentionally perpetuated by a billion dollar industry.

Shouldn’t we all be pissed about this?

I hear rhetoric that tells us it really isn’t that bad. That if we just trust the system and follow the blue arrow on the ground, we will be okay. That the fascist, dystopian, doomed world can’t happen here. But I also hear rhetoric that this is just how it is. How it always has been. Change can’t happen here. It isn’t worth imagining anything different. I think both are happening here, right now. That when buying a pair of glasses sends me into a spiral, it is pretty likely that it (fascism) can happen here and that it (radical change) can happen here.

When I went in to pickup my glasses and he told me insurance actually wouldn’t cover the high-index add ons that were necessary for my prescription and it would be an extra $190, I pulled out my credit card and told the clerk “isn’t that fucked up? They won’t cover it but they are supposed to?” He didn’t say anything back. There is a mandatory $90 fitting fee for contact lenses if I want them to give me my new prescription, even though I have been wearing the same brand of contacts since the eighth grade. “Isn’t that fucked up?” Insurance won’t cover it.

I am at an Electrify America charging our EV with electricity generated from who knows where and I run into the Walmart while it charges to use the bathrooms. I walk past the men’s clothing and notice the underwear and socks are locked behind glass cases. “That is fucked up” I say out loud and an employee hears me and says “yeah, the most stolen merchandise is underwear, so we have to lock them up now.” It’s almost like they need underwear. Isn’t that fucked up?

I start my period and get pissed because I never track my cycle because I like to pretend it doesn’t exist. I can’t find my menstrual cup and am actually out of pads and can’t keep stealing them from my gym so I go to Safeway. $50 for enough pads and tampons to have on hand that I don’t have to do this shit again. $50 is the new $20 is the new $5. Isn’t that fucked up?

My dentist messed up my filling and it fell out. I went to get it refilled and insurance won’t cover it because it’s on the same tooth, so I have to pay out of pocket to get it fixed. Isn’t that fucked up?

I ask my partner how can anyone not look up and around them and be radicalized? He said we are too poor to notice meaning we are too busy trying to fucking survive to notice, meaning just because the government has always spent our money on bombing the Middle East doesn’t mean that we can’t demand that they start paying for our toilet paper instead because everyone needs to shit and $8 for charmin extra ultra mega soft adds up year after year meaning just because the world feels like its burning doesn’t mean we can’t plant seeds in the soil fertilized by the fire and build a better world ourselves.

It doesn’t have to be like this and I truly believe a key step in getting anywhere is going to have to be becoming radicalized by everything. It is not normal. Everything is not okay. It is not alright.

After the election, my partner shared with me Robert Evans’ essay pondering the question that seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongues: “now what?” Something that really clicked with me was the notion that we are living in unprecedented times only because we are allowing ourselves to, enabled by a system that is designed to keep us from imagining any alternative. Through that logic, I suppose it makes sense that the only way out is through becoming— ourselves, our fight, our hope, our ways of connecting— completely unprecedented.

Unprecedented does not strictly mean, to me, novel. It means amplifying, at a never-before seen scale, the ways communities have advocated and cared for one another for generations in the margins of a system that specifically sought to hinder their survival. It means learning, at a new pace, how to dream radical dreams, to love radical love, and to foster creative, imaginative hope. I have saved every single one of my old pairs of glasses over the years. Partially out of sentiment, but more practically now, just in case I find someone with a high prescription who can’t quite hack that $500 and could really use them.

I was not broken up in the same way it seemed so many of my colleagues and friends were when Trump was elected, again, this year. Had he lost, I truly believe that I would have felt so much more hopeless. I do not say this to obscure or diminish the terrifyingly real threat he poses to pretty much everyone and everything I care about, but to point out that I genuinely do not believe we would have as much capacity to fight against the same, oppressive, genocidal, imperialist system had it been draped in token diversity and blue robes.

To try and bring ease to some of my friends, I made a post about Radical Hope. A theory I learned about in my master’s program that was posited as an antidote to capitalism. Simply the act of stepping outside oneself to imagine a their lives outside of capitalism was an act of resistance. I never thought in an institution so steeped in coloniality and theft I would learn about how to use hope and care and love to heal and rebuild this shit ass world we have created. Not gonna lie, it was pretty uplifting to read success stories of communities throughout history and across cultures that have thrived outside of the system by way of building capacity for hope. It seemed those who read my posts found comfort and solace in this notion too. Maybe I’ll make a little zine about it, who knows.

You can see the posts here, with the articles linked at the end of this essay:

We have spent so much time fighting the system from within it that we are obscured by the confines of its dominant culture— white supremacy thrives knowing that we will always be stifled by the lines of white entitlement and normalcy and comfort that it knows we are just not willing to cross. No matter how much we push for it to change, the system is designed to stay in tact.

All of this, I suppose, is to say that I think more of us should be imagining a world where glasses are free and easy to get. That although it is noble and necessary to fight the horrors of this world, as Evans shows the Anarchists and the mutual aid groups do, and it is necessary to advocate and push back, we must also spend time dreaming and building capacity for the new world we want to see, ideally before the old one burns down. Our outrage and anger is critical for recognizing & amplifying normalized injustices, but if we are not also imagining and daydreaming of something better, what is it all for?

As adults, we are too serious for dreaming. Too busy for imagination. Too tired to just play. We are socialized to know that this is just something for children to do— we pay taxes, we clock in every day, we witness horror after horror every single day, how childish of us to stop and tap into fantasy? Except— when we are sold media, books, tv shows, movies about fantasy worlds to escape into from the horrors of reality. Except— only when it is okay and appropriate to daydream about buying a bigger house or getting a better job so that we are constantly moving up the ladder of achievement and can finally access rest, care, joy, hobbies, love. Do not let yourself only daydream of a better world for yourself. Imagine what a world built on pleasure, on love, on care, on hope would look like for everyone. A world that isn’t dependent on the production of capital and the consumption of goods.

Look around, imagine what it would take to move radically through the world and model it everywhere you fucking can. Go back to your childhood stories. Forever read fantasy. Engage in speculative fiction. But also amplify the real stories of community that survived on hope. On care. Tug on that thread more often when something feels fucked up, and be open to the reality that this is not, and will never be, okay just because it’s normal. Even if that means reminding every single person you know how fucked up it is that glasses are so expensive.

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Further reading:

“Ideas to Postpone the End of the World” by Ailton Krenak

“Radical Hope: Transforming Sustainability” by Laila Strazds

“Radical Hope” by Jonathan Lear

The Vision Council Market Insights Report

This isn’t reading, but I highly recommend listening to this Upstream Podcast episode on critical hedonism, it certainly inspired a lot of the thoughts I had while writing this post: “The Politics of Pleasure”