When New York Times opinion writer Frank Bruni woke up with blurred vision one morning several years ago, he had no idea how temporarily losing his sight would turn into unexpected insights into aging, resilience, and human potential.
He tells Jesse Mulligan his experience led him to profoundly reappraise his own priorities.
He also learned from other people who had experienced trauma and loss, many of whom are featured in his book The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found.
Frank Bruni Photo: AFP / FILE
His health problems brought out an inner strength he never thought he had.
“If you had told me that was going to be the situation and asked me how I would respond to it I would have told you I was going to end up in a foetal position for several months,” he says.
“When circumstances demand it we humans are much, much more resilient than we realise."
Dealing with his eye sight crisis involved pain and uncertainty, but opened up a new realisaton about the fragility of our humanity and the inevitably of physical decline as we get older.
He went through two medical trials of two different drugs, one involved injecting a drug directly into the eyeball, the other involved him injecting himself with drugs into his thighs, shoulders and stomach twice per week for six months. His says these experiences alone showed how dexterous humans can be when faced with hardship.
A shock medical situation like his was an early reminder that as we age we cannot depend on our bodily functions to persist indefinitely.
“Everyone of us, as we think about old age, we worry about and you brace for the diminishment of physical abilities," he says.
"You don’t know which ones… I think my story is ultimately about aging. I think those of us you’ve had medical crisis, medical catastrophes, before the age of 60, or before the age of 50, or 40, I think we learn some of the lessons of aging in advance. We learn that when your body betrays you, you find compensatory abilities, or you often do.
“You figure out ways, you figure out workarounds and when they happens it makes the precipice of aging, it makes dusk much less foreboding, much less fearful and makes it seem just part of the human day.”
There are benefits of being old as there are with being young, he says. Emotional wisdom for example is gained, something that’s hard to reach and enjoy the benefits of when younger.
“You sometimes find a serenity that is also elusive when you’re young,” he says.
Although compromised eyesight has been a challenge for Bruni as a journalist, his profession has been a blessing in dealing with his situation.
“My journey has been one of interviewing and talking to other people about how they got through the tough junctures of their lives and the book is in fact largely a series of portraits and episodes of people around me who have mastered the sort of crisis that I was facing." he says.
“I take advantage of their wisdom as I interview them and that’s been a great tool in my own coping.”
He uses the example of a blind man who he met and what struck him was the man’s attitude to his disability. He was a Mexican diplomatic, who prided himself in achieving so much, despite having a disability.
“He was in a very emotionally wise way drawing contentment from his accomplishments as a blind man.”
Hardship does create bonds of humanity, shared pain and suffering can act as a catalyst for increased empathy and solidarity with fellow men and women. This has been Bruni's own experience.
"I think we often do find we have an affinity for each other because we all understand that we have been in the receiving end of life’s uncertainties," he says.
Photo: supplied
"People tell you you don’t know what tomorrow brings and you know that intellectually, but it’s not until you walk up one morning and realise one of your eyes doesn’t work that you really appreciate in a visceral way that you have no idea what tomorrow brings.”
The stroke and compromised eyesight brought him more humility and a greater appreciation of his life and the lives of others. It has given him a better perspective of life, shun of much of the self-pity that had accompanied him through his previous life.
“I consider myself something of a jerk for not having had the breakthrough earlier in life," he says.
"I was someone who was a pessimist and I think that’s a waste and a cowardly way to be. I was someone who had a long list of the slights that fate had dealt me, because I had many more blessings. And so, for me to make the adjustment took a pretty major life event. I think wiser, more mature, better people can come to this place earlier in life without the sort of trial that I had.”
Having a dog also helped during his journey, offering a focus outside of himself.
“I think it would be really important not to get too self-consumed, which often means self-pitying and I felt I needed something that would take me outside of myself," he says.
"It directed the type of energy that I might have spent on worrying about my future, to carrying for another being’s future. To ensuring another being a good future. Regan was a redirection of energy and a circuit of love at a time when both for really needed.”
The way that he further avoided self-pity involved taking a truthful look at the people around him, noting the hardships they overcame and what pain they carried with them. I pointed him towards the fact that his place was among the common humanity of those struggling through life to live meaningful, authentic lives in the face of adversity.
“I thought to myself if we all wore sandwich boards that just listed some of the main things we overcame in our lives or some of the main things we were confronting and being challenged by in real time, each of us would understand that struggle isn’t the exception but the default human situation," he says.
“I think much of us would be much less prone to the question ‘why me’. We would ask the more sensible and mature question, why not me and we would find our way to empathy a whole lot easier.”
He says this approach fundamentally changes interactions with people.
“I’m less quick to anger with the store clerk who’s taking forever or the person on the other end of the phone line who’s not understanding I very clear request.
"I saw to myself I have no idea what that person is going through right now, I’ve no idea what that person has been through and I think those are important things to think because I think they’re relevant. So I am patient, not as patient as I’d like to be but more patient than I was and I’m less hastily judgmental.”
