Providence

All Seeing Eye?

Most of this post was written whilst on holiday in the Philippines but completed and edited today, 26th December 2023. Therefore, please excuse the scattered anachronisms.

Is there such a thing, item, form (the Platonic idealisation), incorporeal or otherwise, as Providence? A man of a sensible, rational nature would gladly and clearly proffer the negative. And yet, gentle reader consider my plight and judge accordingly.

As I write, I'm ensconced in a garret in the centre of Manilla in the Philippines. The air conditioner raves hot, and yet I'm cool; no contradiction at all.

I'm a man of moderate short sight, in the right eye. My left eye is beyond prescription and stares with a befuddled and fixed disparity- thus is my visual/usual lot. It bothers me not at all, and my eye, whilst of no practical use, serves as a bejewelled blue ornament of exquisite beauty. Like a beautiful woman of no intellect, it looks divine but is bereft of any practical purpose.  And so, I digress.

Yesterday, I awoke, as is my usual custom, at 8.00am. Normally, my orbs burst asunder and contemplate the world anew. However, on this occasion, both eyelids resisted their true nature and remained fixed, leaden and encrusted. After a little gentle persuasion with warm water, I managed to rend the lids asunder from their pus-laden habitus and thus became acquainted with the issue at hand. For reasons unknown and unforeseen, it appears that I had become the unfortunate recipient, nay victim, of a bilateral bacterial eye infection, mundanely renowned throughout the land as conjunctivitis. Nothing particularly remarkable about this ocular finding, you might say. Tis commonplace and even banal. But here comes the rub. I normally wear a contact lens in my right eye to correct for myopia. As previously mentioned, my left eye remains unsullied by optical intervention. Regardless, a man afflicted with this unfortunate bacterial condition should take wise counsel and not place a contact lens upon an infected eye. At this time, I did not own a pair of prescription glasses and relied on contact lenses as the sole means to correct my vision.

The day prior to my eye disease, I chanced upon an optician proffering/offering a very good deal concerning wearable eyewear (there is no other), and on a whim, I decided to purchase a pair of glasses. Not only were the glasses relatively cheap, but the whole process, from frame selection through to eye test and manufacture, was within 24 hours. On the day of my infection, I was scheduled to pick up my new eyewear.  If I hadn't made the purchase, and due to my subsequent infection, for the next several weeks, I would not have been able to wear contact lenses. Consequently, I would have been doomed to roam the land reviewing the world through a myopic miasma.   

Now Consider This

At the time of purchasing the glasses, I had no idea I would go on to develop an eye infection. The last time I purchased eyewear was over 35 years ago, and these glasses have long become dissimilated unto the cosmos due to the inevitable march/quest of increasing entropy. 

The convergence of the two events, from a statistical perspective, borders on the miraculous.

Could it be that there are other entities or phenomena at work here? Mayhap a guardian Angel sits upon my shoulder, guiding my every move and whim. Or perhaps I should lay off the gin.