January 24, 2008

• Henry David Thoreau said, "It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
  
  The
  longer I live, the more I find this is true. Have you ever noticed that
  two people can LOOK AT the same scene or person, and both SEE totally
  different things?
  
  For example, a teenage girl can look at herself in
  the mirror with critical eyes and only see the hair color she hates, or
  the extra weight around her hips, or the blemish on her cheek, and feel
  diminished and awkward. But the girl's mother can look at her child
  with love and see the glow in her fresh skin, the sparkles in her clear
  young eyes and the tender beauty of youth.
  
  Two people look at the
  same winter scene in our Ozark hills. One sees only stark leafless
  trees and pastures drained of their summer green, and is left feeling
  sad and empty. The other sees the delicate charcoal sketches the
  branches trace against the sky, and the soft gold velvet covering the
  winter hills, and feels comforted, wrapped up in winter's spare beauty.

  
  

  
  Sometimes,
  one person can look at the identical scene on two different days and
  see two entirely different things. I can remember driving up the gravel
  driveway to my Mississippi house one day, and all I could see were the
  soffits under the eaves that were starting to show signs of rot, and
  the shrubs that needed to be pruned, and the muddy leaves in the yard
  that I still hadn't raked, and the hole in the window screen that I
  needed to get fixed, and I'd feel burdened to be the owner of a
  130-year-old house in constant need of repairs. This was on a day that
  I was feeling overwhelmed and blue, and was looking at the world
  through a nasty gray lens smudged with self-pity, instead of a
  rose-colored lens of joy.
  
  On another day, when my heart was lighter
  and I had my rosy lens of hope and gratitude firmly in place, I could
  drive up that driveway and look at that exact same yard and house in an
  entirely different way. On that day what I'd see would be the buds
  swelling on my huge azaleas, and the tall windows with the wavy old
  hand-blown glass that I loved, and the huge pecan trees leaning
  protectively over the backyard and the purple and yellow pansies
  blooming in the brick remains of the old cistern, and I’d feel grateful
  for my historic house and proud to be its mistress.
  
  What is it that
  makes the difference? Why do we sometimes look through a lens that
  focuses in on what's wrong with our world? Why do some people
  consistently look through a negative lens, a gray, smeary, dirty lens,
  and see the slights, the hurts, the wrongs, the failings, the sins,
  shortcomings? Why are we sometimes able to look through what I think of
  as a pink lens, a rose-colored lens, that allows us to see past the
  surface grime of life and into the glowing heart of things, into the
  underlying beauty and joy and love that surround and infuse this rich
  Creation we're privileged to share?
  
  I believe it's a choice we’ve
  learned to make. Somewhere along the way, some of us have learned to
  put the gray lens up to the eyes of our hearts and experience life that
  dismal way — not seeing the joy, not seeing the beauty, not seeing the
  humor, not seeing the kindness, but zooming in on moldy old hurts and
  festering angers and stale resentments and mildewed bitterness, and
  using a wide-angle lens of self-pity. This is the easiest way, that
  takes the least effort.
  
  But looking through the rose-colored lens —
  the polarized lens that allow us to see what is REAL — is something we
  can learn to do.  It doesn't come easily or naturally to most of us,
  but we really can choose which lens to look through. I believe we can
  decide to be happy. We can decide to look for the rainbow instead of
  the thundercloud. We can decide to look UP at the blue sky instead of
  down at the dirt. We can choose to look for the good in people instead
  of what we can criticize about them. We can choose to look for the
  beauty in the winter landscape.
  

  
  

  
  It's not always easy, but it's a
  habit we can form. Some of us were lucky or blessed enough to learn in
  childhood to look on the bright side, to look for the good, to choose
  to be positive instead of negative, to look at the world through the
  lens of God’s love. Others of us have had to learn it the hard way, by
  realizing that we really do have a choice, and it's up to us to make
  it.
  

  
  

  
  We might not always get to choose what we have to LOOK AT in
  this life, but we can choose what we SEE when we turn our eyes that way.

  By Celia DeWoody
  Published in the Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times, Jan. 22, 2008
  Copyright Harrison Daily Times

  • 9:28 pm
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