Feb 14, 2023

Life-Lenses

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

  But after I got my first pair of glasses, those corrective lenses changed everything.  I now saw the world 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.

 My new clarity gave life a completely different quality and feel.  Things which had seemed so very threatening and frustrating to me (like fast moving baseballs) suddenly became completely nonthreatening and very doable.

 Since those younger days, I have discovered, on a whole new level, something about corrective lenses.  It is this.  Indeed, life’s quality very much revolves around the “corrective life-lenses” we employ to view life’s circumstances. 

 Obviously, life is what it is.  And, like it or not, its issues and circumstances are very often distorted and hard to make out.  And, so we employ psychological life-lenses to help us better navigate those challenges.

 And, sometimes these really improve our ability to manage life, and sometimes - not so much.  It all depends on the underlying prescription of those lenses. 

 For example, there are many self-serving folks out there, most of whom seem to belong to the Marx family, who are trying to clarify the means to a racially, economically, and politically divided America.  So they wear, and advocate for all, the life-lens of Hatefulness

  But, the rest of us, who have not yet gone clinically insane, understand that this is a really bad prescription.  Tragically, it has already been tried in many nations around the world - always with consistently horrific results. All this lens of hatefulness ever really does is bring life to a deep shade of blood red. 

  But there is another corrective life-lens which creates a truly improved vision of life in America – and everywhere else for that matter.  And, this is its underlying prescription:  A very personalized willingness to embrace a deep sense of gentle responsibility for the well-being and enduring joy of others.

 This is the life-lens which, instead of magnifying societal tensions, causes us to see through them, to discover and experience truly durable solutions - together.  This is the prescription of the infinitely nobler life-lens of Brotherly Love

 And, it always begs this divine question.  Will you just love those who love you?  If your answer is "yes," you've put on the wrong glasses.  You should immediately return them to the Marx family.