Remove the Shades
Nowadays they make sunglasses designed to block UV rays without blocking light from the color spectrum. The idea is to make what you see through the lenses more true to life. However, on this particular morning I stepped outside wearing the first pair of shades I could get my hands on – an inexpensive pair of children’s sunglasses belonging to my grandson, sporting multi-colored frames and cheap lenses that block out almost all light.
As I looked around at all the brown grass, dead weeds, muddy patches, and the last vestiges of this season’s meager snowfall, I thought to myself…this is a depressing sight. At least when there was snow there was something pretty to look at. I found myself longing for spring to begin, even though the temps this season were more spring-like than winter-like.
After a while of standing there gazing out at my property and wondering when I went from being thrilled by it to depressed by it, I noticed that my lenses were covered with a mass of tiny toddler fingerprints. I wondered to myself how I hadn’t noticed them as soon as I had put the shades on, and I smiled to myself as I thought of that precious little boy. I could see him clearly in my memory smiling in the sun….his grin taking up almost as much room on his face as his over-sized sunglasses. He’s the light of my life.
I was still smiling to myself as I slipped off the shades and placed them in my pocket. And then I saw the most amazing sight. Green. Everywhere I looked as far as my eye could see. New green grass coming back as the ground thaws, fighting its way through the brown tangled mass of last season’s leftovers. Its not spring yet. There are no tender green buds on the trees, flowers beginning to bloom, or the vibrant green carpet of grass that is unique to springtime. But there is green. There mixed in with the brown. Showing itself early, it carries the energy of hope and a promise of what is yet to come.
I couldn’t see it before because my eyes were shaded and therefore, my perception was shaded as well. The reality remained constant, but my perception changed when I chose to remove my shades. This got me to thinking about how so many things in our lives are a matter of perception and how there’s so much we aren’t aware of because our perception isn’t what it could be/should be.
Emotions like anger, pain, hatred, apathy, fear, jealousy, want/lack, depression and so on….these all shade our perception of the reality of our lives and what goes on around us. They remove the color from our lives, leaving our hearts empty, our futures bleak, and our day to day experiences something to get through rather than something to embrace and rejoice in.
Shades stop us from perceiving the reality of everything that’s out there so we don’t even bother to look for something better. Had I not been bothered by the fingerprints on my lenses, I would not have removed my shades. I didn’t know I would perceive a better reality when I chose to remove them. Yet it was that choice, followed by that action, which allowed me to see what I had been missing.
I think that often times what keeps us stuck in life…stuck in a rut…and stuck in an apathetic acceptance of having/being/doing less than what we desire and deserve…is the lack of knowing that all we have to do is remove our shades in order to see the reality that they hide. Our challenges and our blessings, hints of color and subtle nuances, glaring opportunities and a wide spectrum of choices to make….these all lie before us like threads of a tapestry waiting to be woven.
We need only to choose it and do it.
