Better with this one, or this one

An optician in Port Said never asks whether a lens looks clear. He knows the answer would be useless. Through almost any lens, after a few seconds, the eye decides the world looks fine.

So he asks something else. He flips between two lenses and asks which is better, the first or the second. Then again. Then again. Alone, each lens seems acceptable. Side by side, the difference is obvious, and the patient can name it without any training at all.

Most of our judgements work like the lone lens. One neighbourhood, one supplier, one way of doing things for years. With nothing beside it, it settles into normal. Not good, not bad, just how things are. The blur is invisible because there is nothing sharp to hold against it.

That is why the most useful question in many decisions is a short one: compared with what? A price, a service, a habit, a plan only becomes legible when something stands next to it.

There is a limit, though. The optician can offer the second lens because the patient is going to buy one. Comparison is a tool for choosing. When there is no choice to make, when what you have is genuinely all that is on offer, holding it against something better does not sharpen anything. It only teaches you to resent what you are looking through.

Compare when you can choose. When you cannot, it may be kinder to stop flipping the lenses.