I recently bought a pair of $30 binoculars from Amazon and it’s become one of my favorite ourchases in recent memory.

I’ll frequently head up to the roof of my apartment and look out across the bay at Alcatraz, at the fog rolling over the hills, at buildings in downtown FiDi, container ships lumbering and ferries zipping across the bay. On warm days I like to look at the sailboats and the seagulls and small green parrots flitting about the city.

I’ll take the binoculars with me to the office and look at the buildings on my breaks. I get admire the details and textures in the façades that are normally too far and high up to appreciate. I take them on the, now infrequent, occasions when I hike and I get to observe eagles and wildlife and beautiful landscapes up close.

By far the best part of binoculars is how they expand my lived environment. They make the world noticeably bigger. I have 270deg of beautiful views from my apartment rooftop but to the naked eye you can only divide that up into to 3 or 4 distinct frames: downtown, the Bay, Washington Square, and Telegraph Hill.

But with the binoculars, I get an order of mangitude more distinct views to look at. It’s no longer just the view of the Bay, it’s a view of Alcatraz, of the mountains of Marin, Fisherman’s Wharf, interesting buildings on Russian Hill, a beautiful church, and more. The magnification allows me to divide up the landscape into many more discrete frames of interest. It allows me to appreciate these smaller chunks of my overall field of view with their distinct and rich details, colors, and activity. The locations become not just landmarks but movement: people, buses, ships, planes, wildlife. The city turns from a skyline to a living entity that you can experience from afar.

I could write a whole essay on how the size and scale of your lived environemnt affects your mental health. Sit in a room for long enough and your brain quite literally forgets at a primal level that a world exists beyond the walls. The average person lives in a very small environment: their apartment, their office, their gym, and the ubers or walk in between. Binoculars are a surprisingly cheap and fun way to break away from that.

Another underrated benefit of binoculars is how they’re a screenless hobby. Sitting in front of a computer and looking at my phone for upwards of 10 hours a day does something to my mind. The analog light through the two lenses pressed to my eyes feel like a spiritual cleansing after a day of screens. Our brains are so wired for digital that it’s almost unnerving when can magnify your view without losing any definition or seeing pixelation.

If you’re my friend I’ve probably foisted the binochs upon you at various times over the past few months and I’ve probably invited you to my rooftop to come look at things with me. I will continue to do this and I’ve already bought a couple people some pairs as gifts.

This is a hobby that scales, too. I got a cheap pair but there’s levels to this. I was blown away by their quality initially but now I notice the distortions, chromatic abberations, and restricted field of view. I’m looking to ugprade. A $100 or $200 pair can significantly improve the experience on many dimensions that I’m excited to explore. Will I envetually want to get a $1,000 pair? What sort of features and improvements would be noticeable with a such a leap in price? I hesitate to even think about it.

Will I be satisfied with just handhelds? Maybe I’ll upgrade to telescopes to observe the planets and stars. Or perhaps even microscopes to observe the unseen world all around me! What will I find? What will I be able to see with my own eyes?