Missing Perspective

“The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.” – Helen Keller

Lately, I have been struggling with something in my personal life that seems so obvious, yet, I’m not finding the solution anywhere…. So a wise person said to me, “You have sight, but no vision.” … Rarely, do words cut me to the core so quickly. I am the Queen of rationalizing, and anyone can pretty much give me any critique or criticism and I can turn it on its head to a positive for me or figure out how to be right in almost any particular situation . Yes, this is a defense mechanism, but I’ve learned over the last 6 months to be more introspective especially when receiving advice from wise and caring people. So let’s go back to what they said:

“You have sight, but no vision.”

Now in a textbook Eye Doctor definition, “Eye sight is tested through one’s ability to see images up close and far away” (source) “The term “vision” however, encompasses the idea of eyesight but goes a little bit beyond it.  Eye care doctors check to see if the eyes are working in sync” involving things like focus, convergence and depth perception.

So let’s be a little abstract here, when you only have sight about something in your life, you take it at face value, and you just run with it. But what about your heart, your gut or intuition, do you listen? Because sometimes what we “see” in life is based on a misperception or a missed-perception.

So let’s take a moment, and check our vision. What area in your life lacks vision?  How about your future? Is there are a part of your life where you lack vision and your heart, mind, body and soul refuse to work in one accord, practically fighting each other to keep you at a stand still?

I’ve been there. I’m currently stuck in a few areas in my life with no vision, trying to find my way out of a hole.

So can we live if we only see the things in front of us and don’t perceive the deeper layer or what’s in the shadows? Of course, we can, but do you want to? It’s so easy to be fooled by our eyes. We can become so addicted to getting what we want and not realizing there’s more than meets the eye. (Sorry not sorry, pun intended) .

So let me put in some personal context:   

When I started this blog, three years ago, I lacked vision. By pure will and boredom, I wanted to write, figure out social media and numb my senses due to some mistakes I had made that completely changed the trajectory of my life.  Writing gives me a joy that I never thought I’d experience  again after not pursuing my first passion of dance after graduating from my performing arts high school. Writing has basically become my special power that I didn’t know I had nor did I know the role it would play in my life. To be honest, I am still not 100% on what it will look like for the rest of my life,  but sitting here, and twiddling my thumbs, because from what I can SEE, all I have are serious doubts about doing this. No one really likes my blog? What if I offend someone? No one cares, seriously.  Pretty surface level stuff.

I’ve written in several blogs about my apprehension in writing. Am I writing for me, writing for others, and to put it quite frankly, writing for the stats, the views of the general public. Those three things are hard to balance, and I’ve probably only mastered it once on my own personal blog. I usually accomplish it more when I write for someone else.

This is (or was) the first problem.

You can’t find your vision when you’re looking in the wrong place. Even people with the best intentions can fool you, when you’re not creating a vision for yourself, you get lost. Soon after I start blogging, and every time I talked about writing, someone was always asking if I could write for them. Initially, I was flattered, but I was in the midst of finding my vision, I got distracted looking in places that weren’t for me. I wrote some amazing blogs, but I had to get off this train or I would never find my vision.

So I have decided to write for me from here on out. Not that I don’t want others to read and enjoy my work, but I started Missing Perspective to share my point of view. But things began changed. As a social commentary writer, it’s crazy to think about how different America was just three years in the political landscape.

This is (or was) the second problem. Change. Be ready for it. Your vision cannot be expected to live in a vacuum. Our two eyes can catch a lot of action, in the vision for your life, there will be surprises. Life ebbs and flows. As the political landscape changed, something I love to write about, I found myself scared. It feels as if people, for the most part, only try to read and listen to opinions of like minded individuals nowadays. Our country is so divided it seems there are only a few places of common ground when there should be so much more it. So I made excuses about why I couldn’t write this or that, because things have changed, but I wouldn’t enjoy a world where topics were recycled over and over. I wasn’t prepared for change… and preparation is key without it a vision will fizzle and die. 

And of course, the most important piece, and where my biggest growth over the last few months  is focus. If I find myself looking in the right place, seeing the full landscape (depth perception), expecting change… there’s only one step left. The most important step.

To simply focus on the task at hand. To allow yourself to zoom in and zoom out to get just the right picture, to see the full view….. and create your vision.

I am ready…. Are you?

Feel free to share you thoughts below in the comments, or tweet at me here with the #vision