I started wearing glasses close to a year ago.
They are life changing.
I probably should have started wearing them three years ago, but here we are.
A friend of mine who has been wearing glasses since she was a young child, told me something profound about glasses:
They are now your eyes.
Let's take a brief interlude from my glasses story to talk about what it means to see.
Sight is a privilege.
Like other privileges, sight can be invisible to those who hold it, and therefore it runs the risk of being abused or misused.
The other day, my wife and I were having a conversation and she was sharing what it meant for her to feel seen.
Feeling seen is an incredible feeling.
Anyone with the privilege of sight has the power to help someone feel seen.
The tricky part is that if we misuse our privilege of sight, we might fail to see.
What causes us to misuse our sight?
Well, I'll speak to my own life and perhaps you can relate.
Often, I'm too busy looking at myself to really see others.
I don't mean that I carry a mirror around and hold it up during every conversation.
I mean that the soundtrack that's playing in my head when I'm with other people, often gets in the way of me being able to clearly see them.
If you're reading this, you've very likely been on a Zoom (or equivalent) call in the past year.
Think of how distracted you are by your own face while on Zoom.
You can hide your face by the way, and when I did, I found it incredibly freeing.
I felt like I was able to actually see others.
Our inner dialogue can sometimes be like that self-view on Zoom that's persistently and invisibly following us around in every conversation we have.
Ok, back to me wearing glasses.
They are now my eyes.
The thing you should know about glasses is that they get dirty.
All. The. Time.
When there's a speck of something on your glasses, you simply can't help but keep looking at it.
Many times each day, I have to clean my glasses.
When I put on my freshly cleaned glasses, it feels like I have a new set of eyes.
Cleaning my glasses allows me to see with no obstructions.
Whether you wear them or not, clean your glasses.
The world is worth seeing.
