A single fall can change the course of an older person’s life.
That was the sobering conclusion of a study published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. Researchers followed 2,454 adults age 65 and older for two years and found that about one in five experienced a first fall during that time. For many, that first fall became what the researchers called an “inflection point,” increasing the likelihood of future falls, fractures, emergency room visits, and the need for ongoing care.
The findings were the focus of a recent Washington Post interview with Dr. Nathalie van der Velde, a professor of geriatric medicine at Amsterdam University Medical Center and one of the world’s leading experts on fall prevention.
Her advice was both practical and reassuring. Stay active. Review medications regularly. Wear appropriate footwear. Keep your home well lit. Have your vision checked. Build strength and balance long before old age.
Then she offered one recommendation that caught many readers by surprise.
If you wear bifocals or progressive lenses, remove them before walking down stairs or stepping off a curb.
The problem isn’t the glasses themselves. Looking down often means looking through the reading portion of the lens, which slightly alters depth perception. That subtle distortion can make it harder to judge the height of the next step. Research has shown that people who wear regular distance glasses outdoors instead of bifocals experience fewer falls.
It is a remarkably simple idea. But it also raises a larger question. What other lenses shape the way we see?
Henry David Thoreau once observed, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
At first glance, his words seem to be about eyesight. They are really about perception.
Our eyes gather information, but our minds decide what that information means. Two people can witness the same event and come away with entirely different conclusions. They are looking at the same reality, but not through the same lens. Some of those lenses are shaped by experience.
Carl Jung believed that important experiences continue to shape the way we see long after the experience itself has passed. He called them complexes—clusters of memories, emotions, expectations, and associations that continue to influence how we interpret new situations. They are not necessarily signs of illness. They are part of being human.
A child who grows up in a home where criticism was constant may become unusually sensitive to disapproval. Someone who has endured betrayal may notice hints of dishonesty that others never see. A person who has been deeply encouraged may approach new opportunities with confidence while another, carrying years of disappointment, hesitates before taking the same first step.
The event is not the lens. Our experience of the event becomes the lens.
That helps explain why reasonable people can see the same conversation, the same setback, or the same opportunity so differently. They are not simply reacting to the present moment. They are also responding to everything that came before it.
Most of the time, we are unaware this is happening. We simply assume we are seeing things as they are. But what if we are also seeing them as we have learned to see them? This is where understanding becomes practice.
Most of us never think about the lenses we wear until someone points out that they matter. The same is true of the lenses through which we interpret our lives.
Every day presents us with people to understand, decisions to make, disappointments to absorb, and moments of unexpected grace. We meet them carrying years of accumulated experience. That experience is valuable. It gives us wisdom, judgment, and perspective. But it can also become so familiar that we mistake it for reality itself.
A conversation with an adult child can be filtered through decades of family history. A brief silence from a friend may awaken memories of earlier rejection. A doctor’s diagnosis may be heard not only as today’s news but through the fear created by another illness years before.
Sometimes we are responding to the present.
Sometimes we are responding to the lens.
The spiritual traditions have long encouraged this kind of awareness. Before asking us to change our actions, they ask us to examine our hearts. Why did those words provoke such a strong reaction? Why did that criticism linger for days while a compliment disappeared in minutes? Why does one obstacle awaken hope while another awakens despair?
They invite us to notice that we are looking through a lens before we decide what we are seeing.
Life presents obstacles we cannot avoid. Illness. Loss. Disappointment. Aging itself. We do not get to choose whether they appear in our path.
But we can choose the lens through which we see them.
One lens sees only decline. Another sees adaptation. One expects every setback to become a dead end. Another asks, “What is this asking of me now?” The obstacle has not changed. The way we approach it has.
That does not mean pretending suffering is somehow good or that every hardship contains a hidden blessing. Some experiences are simply painful. Grief is real. Loneliness is real. Physical limitations are real.
Choosing a different lens does not change those facts. It changes what we do next. The right lens does not remove the obstacle. It helps us see it more clearly.
Sometimes the smallest adjustment changes what we see.
One more thing.
Dr. Nathalie van der Velde is 51 years old. She is decades younger than many of the people she studies. Yet years of watching how a single fall can alter a person’s life have already changed the way she lives her own. While brushing her teeth each morning, she stands on one foot. Although she now needs reading glasses, she avoids bifocals outdoors because she has seen too many people misjudge a step while looking through the reading portion of the lens.
Experience becomes a lens.
Related spiritual themes: jung, mindfulness in later life, perception, vision
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