I have always had incredible vision – I’m talking about actual eyesight. When I was a little kid, our family was driving through Washington, D.C. and my parents put me in the front seat to help them read road signs. It was after 10 PM and I could barely keep my eyes open, but they tugged on my sleeve to keep me awake so that they wouldn’t get lost. This was in the days before we had cell phones and navigation systems in our vehicles and we had to use things like a TripTik to get around. (iykyk)
Through college and early adulthood my eyesight remained stellar. I never thought twice about it. But over the past 12 months, I began to notice a shift. I chalked it up to changing jobs where my screen time increased and my eyes were tired. But one evening while I was driving, someone pointed out a highway sign and I mentioned that I couldn’t read it and everyone else in the car could. And I knew that it was time for a check up.
It was my first time to do a real deal, full-blown vision test, and come to find out, I needed glasses when I drive. And to watch movies. And to see my kids on stage or on the field or the court. And to see literally anything further than a few feet. When they finally came in and I put them on for the first time, everything became crystal clear. And I mean everything. It wasn’t that I couldn’t see; it was that I couldn’t see it at the level that I should see – the intricate details of every tree and flower as I drove, the facial expressions on my kids faces when they were doing the things they loved. I was missing it.
The thing is, I once had perfect vision. Literally. Better than 20/20. But when I put the glasses on, I realized how clouded my vision had become. And I hadn’t even noticed.
I’ve often shared that vision is the easiest in a moment of crisis. What I mean by that is when you’re in the middle of a really difficult time, your vision becomes laser focused on the problem or the crisis before you. But when things are going relatively well, it is difficult to maintain a clear vision of where to go next.
Perhaps that’s where complacency comes from. When things are going well, there is not an urgent need to assess where you need to go and how you need to get there. And ultimately you find comfort in staying exactly where you are.
It made me wonder how long my vision had been bad and why I let it go so long without doing the very simple process of getting tested and getting glasses.
Perhaps we don’t want to clear our vision because we really don’t want to see some things around us. I love the Johnny Nash lyrics, “I can see clearly now the rain is gone.” The melody immediately brings me to a calm and peaceful place. But when you listen to the end of that line, it says “I can see all obstacles in my way.” Sometimes we let our vision go cloudy because we really don’t want to see the obstacles that are in our way.
The thing was – I didn’t even notice. I didn’t even notice that my vision was as bad as it was. After I got my glasses, my family gave me a hard time because I kept taking them on and off and showing my fascination with how well I could now see.
So how do we keep our vision clear?
- Think about the areas of your life, both professionally, and personally, that are important to you: professional health, physical health, financial health, relational health, spiritual health, etc.
- Spend some time assessing where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’d like to be in each of those areas
- Bring someone else into your thought process and ask them what they see and envision together what “could be” for your life
- Decide where you need to grow and how you need to grow. Is it a book you need to read? (if you’re like me, probably one of the ones that has spent months on your bedside table). A podcast you need to listen to? A conversation you need to seek out from someone that you respect?
I am super fortunate that my vision was not serious enough to cause any accidents. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t miss out in the process. It is ridiculously easy to let life go by – because it goes by so very fast. From a mom who has two freshmen – one in high school and one in college, let me just say it goes by real fast. And unless we’re intentional about the kind of lives we want to lead, the kind of things we want to do and the kind of people we want to be – we may end up staying in that comfortable, complacent space – instead of stepping into the life that we were meant to lead.
How is your vision?
Jill M Siler 