“The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious, but still a truthful interpreter – in the eye.” – Charlotte Bronte –
My eyes have resisted ‘normal’ all my life. As a result, I have had a pair of spectacles on my nose as long as my memory stretches. These orderly-defiant eyes also require the annual visit to the experts who have to be convinced that I really cannot see those damn minuscule letters projected on the wall. At a recent visit, I was informed that I again needed new glasses … so here I am a couple of weeks later with an incandescent purple pair and, yes, the world has come back into focus.
Those of us who are part of the spherical spectacle syndicate will appreciate that any new pair of glasses requires a relationship with patience and adjustment. It’s overwhelming to suddenly see that clearly! I think one of the secret joys of all optometrists is to have that moment where they put a contraption on your nose and say, ‘This is your old prescription’, then a few clicks and glass slide shuffles later and, ‘Voila! Your new prescription’. Gets me every time. Yes, ok, you win, I needed new glasses!
It’s not just my physical eyes that need new glasses. I have found that my way of looking at the world needs a good dose of challenge and deconstruction if I want to live congruent with the values and ethics that are important to me. A habit has a way of petrifying our minds. When we mix habit with the notion that our ideas should not be tested because they are somehow sacred or certain, we may find that smugness, not kindness, informs our lives.
As 2018 begins to wind down, I take time to reflect on a rather grueling year. It has been a year of saying more goodbyes, moving house, facing illness, and completing a Masters in Narrative Therapy and Community Work through Dulwich Centre and Melbourne University. It is this masters that has shaken my life up. It has provided me with a new pair of spectacles. My focus has been adjusted and, like any new glasses, has sometimes made me feel quite queasy as it provokes deeply embedded ways of thinking with the question, ‘Why’? I have discovered that assumption has had a part to play in diminishing the voice of curiosity in my life. And I am not okay with that! As 2019 is now only a few weeks away I am beginning a new chant … Viva la Curiosity!
Friend, how are your eyes? Do you still find their focus meaningful? Is there a niggling doubt about the spectacles you have been prescribed as one-size-fits-all? Is it time to get a second opinion? Maybe your own opinion as the expert optometrist of your life and views? Is it time to challenge some old assumptions and prejudices? I hope that 2019 will be filled with some new friends … and if curiosity and wonder are precious to you … remember to put out the welcome mat!
“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
