Perceptions of the World

About 10 years ago, I took my kids to the eye doctor. They were young and up until that time, the only eye testing they had was that basic test from the pediatrician. Two of the three of them checked out great, the third one was seeing so poorly – the doctor was shocked that she had not complained about not being able to see. Then he explained it to me. Unless you lose your sight all at once, you lose it gradually. And when we lose the clarity of our sight gradually – we adapt to it. It becomes something that we adjust our lives to and we don’t even complain about it – because it becomes us.

Now, this child of mine, had issues with school work. Well, no wonder she had trouble – she could barely see the damn paper in front of her! Ughhh. I remember the day her glasses came in. She was silent with the most amazing smile. All the things she thought were true to life in her world now changed.   Life was no longer distorted, but became crystal clear. I watched as she put her hand in front of her face and studied a tree on the roadside as we drove home. Her world had opened up. It wasn’t a bad world before the glasses… it was world she’d known for years. It was drab and blurry but it was her world and she lived in it. But now her world was crisp and she saw detail. What used to appear as a blurry blob was now a wonderfully puffy cloud, or the textured bark on a tree, or the wrinkles on her mothers face.

So when you think of life like this – as in we adjust to our surroundings, we adjust to the world and we live in it according to what we see… it makes perfect sense that the same applies to the good and the bad of life – the happy and sad – the negative and the positive. Now let’s look at some what if’s: What if we turned off the news for a week, a month, a year – and replaced it with reading or watching something positive, some feel good stories, some true life hero stories, success stories, or recovery stories. I guarantee you that your life will change. You will begin to adapt your mind and your body to feel good. In turn you will think good things and you will have no choice but to go out into the world and DO good things. No choice, I say, because your vision will alter! Rather than the sinking feeling that the world is horrible and sad, that people are mean or self-centered, or that the world is a mess… you will literally KNOW that the opposite is true. You will know this because you are focusing on that now. You are filling yourself with it, you are letting that into your life and your life will become it!

SO much good is happening every single day in the world, but we choose to place our attention on the negative. That must stop. While bad things DO happen – there is no reason on this earth that we should have to read about it, listen to it, and watch it unfold over and over again on television – for days or weeks. No reason at all. Not when it places your perception of the world, into that world. Not when it becomes they only thing you see or feel. All the negative thrust upon our society is the thing that blurs our way of living. Finding the good, sharing the good, focusing and being the good – that is our new set of eyes. That is the adjustment we need to fix our perception of the real world.