Seeing
Anew
“One's
destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
Henry
Miller
I
picked up my new glasses yesterday. They are progressive lenses, with
correction for three different distances. They take some getting used
to. Right now, I feel like some weird bird, peering this way and
that, trying to see through the proper strip of lens. I remember the
first time I put on corrective glasses at age fifteen. I walked home
from the Dr.'s office watching the waves in the sidewalk that seemed
to rise and fall as I put my foot down. Seeing individual leaves on
trees high above me clarified just how much I'd been missing. It was
a revelation.
Sometimes,
looking anew at old situations and everyday events is like getting a
new pair of glasses. You can think you know everything there is to
know about a given person, and then be told a single piece of
information that changes everything. You can move up to a new
position at work, and suddenly you see that setting from a different
perspective. Now you're the boss or the manager, and life looks all
together different. Someone may point out something about you, or
something you said or did, and you get a glimpse of how others see
you that is very different from how you see yourself. It can tilt
your equilibrium.
It's
a good idea from time to time to check in with people who know you
well, and inquire: “Tell me something about myself that you think I
don't know.” Of course, you have to be ready to hear what they say.
I once pointed out to my mother how her off-hand comments about
people made her seem arrogant, and she was flabbergasted. She had no
idea, and it wasn't her intent to be nasty, but through my lens,
that's how it looked. We need to be aware of how others see us, not
so we can feel guilty, but so that we can learn something new. It
shifts our perspective, so that we arrive at a different, less
narrow, destination.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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