At least once a week, I see an offer touting half off prescription glasses. It occurs to me that regardless of whether or not we wear glasses or contacts, many of us are only using half of our vision.
Seeing ourselves with accuracy is a lifelong pursuit that starts with a willingness to know ourselves fully—the good stuff, as well as the wounds that still need healing.
A refusal to see ourselves clearly requires us to continually run the other way to avoid bumping into ourselves. Using busyness, denial or other escapes to stay outside reality is exhausting and unsatisfying. The more we do it, the more we have to do it to protect ourselves from seeing the truth.
There is a price to pay for discovery and doing the hard work of personal growth. It takes guts to uncover the person we were created to be before the obstacles of life interfered with our thinking and our plans. It demands a persistent investment of time, energy and courage.
There’s also a price to pay for avoidance. We remain blind to who we really are, where we measure up and where we fall short. We refuse to acknowledge what we really care about, which leaves us restless and discontented, short of the life we’re meant to live.
We get to choose which price we want to pay.
When we don’t face ourselves and choose our authentic paths, the world around us also pays a price. Whatever we're each supposed to bring to this world is part of a bigger picture. Other people need our gifts, talents and examples, as much as we need theirs. We each play a small part of a universal orchestra, where every player matters.
We can’t do everything and be everywhere, so we need one another to fill in the gaps. What we do and what we don’t do affects not just us, but others too. Our lives are so much more interwoven than we could ever comprehend. We touch one another in known, as well as unknown ways.
Starting with needing help from an eating disorder, I have been on the recovery path since my late teens. As life happened, I've had to look at codependency and other unhealthy ways I learned to cope. I know many of you are pursuing recovery and personal growth also.
The symptoms and solutions may vary, but what we're really recovering is the persons we were meant to be, before life convinced us we were less than that.
Regularly updating our vision prescription helps us see ourselves and our lives more clearly. Introspection takes time, humility, patience, faith, and most of all, a desire and willingness to see what’s really inside. If we’re willing to dig, we’ll find the buried treasure that’s buried within us all.
I’m driven to keep digging because each new depth reached shows me something valuable about myself. I love helping others dig for buried treasure, too, so please let me know if you need some help.
Share your stories with me. Tell me how you are getting to the truth.
Life is not a magical staircase we climb vertically. It’s a spiral staircase where we go round and round. Sometimes we feel like we keep visiting the same place, but we have to remember that we’re bringing all of our wisdom, experiences, insight and understanding with us every time we make another pass.
Some days, it may feel like we are never going to arrive. And that is the truth on this side, because if we’re still breathing, there’s more room to grow and learn.
For today, let’s wipe the dust from our lenses and take a fresh look at who we are, where we are, who and where we want to be, and be open to receiving guidance on how to move in the right direction.
Some questions to consider:
- What stories are we telling ourselves in order to feel good about our lives? What is the whole truth?
- Do we cling to partial details, or only remember half of a conversation to honor our need to remain in our old stories?
- How is it serving us to avoid our truths?
- Who would you be if you believed anything you wanted about yourself?
- What would you do if someone hadn’t told you that you couldn’t do it?
- Are you paying the price of discovery or avoidance?
- Are you willing to be all of you?
