What You See

  Corrective lenses, glasses, I’ve worn them since I was nine years old.  Before that ninth year, the world was a distorted and blurry place.  However, I just thought that was the way life looked.  So, I struggled in school, in sports, and in my general activities. 

  But after I got my first pair of glasses, everything changed.  I now saw life much more clearly – including the chalk board at school, the baseballs I was trying to hit and catch, and the far horizons of my surroundings.  Indeed, life dramatically changed for the better.  And, that change, changed me.

 This new perspective gave life a completely different quality and feel.  Things which had seemed so very threatening and/or frustrating to me (like fast moving baseballs) suddenly became completely nonthreatening and very manageable.

 Since those younger days, I have also discovered a whole new level of insight regarding corrective lenses.  It is this.  Life's quality very much revolves around the “corrective life-lenses” we employ to view its circumstances. 

 Obviously, life is what it is.  And, like it or not, its issues are often distorted and hard to make out.  And, so we employ psychological corrective-lenses to help us clarify those challenges.  And, sometimes they work well, and sometimes - ah, not so much. It all depends on the correctness of the prescription of those lenses. 

 For example, some choose the prescription of poor little mistreated me through which to filter life's images.  It is a bad prescription which typically engenders a very flawed picture that usually results in the off-balance life approach of demanding hatefulness. 

 But there is another life-lens which truly improves one's vision and results in a much more balanced life-approach.  It is the lens defined by Patience.  This is the life-lens which, instead of outlandishly magnifying societal tensions, enable us to see through them to discover and experience truly durable solutions - together.   

 Often, as I once did regarding my distorted view of life, we think,  "Well, that is just the way life looks."  But, in fact, when we employ a proper prescription, the feel and quality of life can, indeed, be drastically changed for the better.  And, things which previously seemed so  threatening and/or frustrating can then be made to seem completely nonthreatening  and very manageable.  

The simple truth is this. What you see in life is, indeed, precisely what you get.