This week, I was gifted with some moments of clarity. One such moment involved getting my first pair of glasses.
It came on slow, as deteriorating vision often does. I first noticed I might need glasses in December when I was visiting home in the US. I don’t drive in Costa Rica, and am not even in cars altogether that often since I walk and bike most places, so I don’t pay a lot of attention to road signs. On our trip, being in cars often and being out of my usual surroundings, I noticed the green signs on highways were blurry to me. After encountering this on my most recent trip back, I decided I should probably do something about it.
I went for a vision exam and, indeed, it found I was nearsighted and would benefit from glasses. The new glasses were ready on my birthday. Putting them on, they immediately brought things into sharper detail. I didn’t even realize things had been hazy before. Things are suddenly in much sharper focus.
This is a moment of sharpening focus.
This is a moment for clarity.
This is a moment for seeing with new eyes.
There are moments that sharpen our focus. Moments where everything suddenly becomes clearer. Moments when what matters becomes elucidated.
The other micromoment of clarity I experienced this week happened while Daphne was sick on my birthday. I had been moderately stressed about something at work, and it was weighing on me, leaving me preoccupied. That night, the wee hours of my birthday, Daphne woke up vomiting. I spent the night cleaning up her vomit and on edge, each choppy breath while she slept an indication that another wave was coming. The next day was my birthday. I had to cancel my mammogram (which I had been oddly looking forward to). Staying home with her, it became clear that nothing was more important, that the work anxiety was pointless. Priorities came into focus.
In between rounds of her vomiting, in the wee hours of the 24th of April while she slept and I couldn’t, I watched students from Columbia hold their ground in front of state violence, and as the protest movement swept across the country.
The students are showing us, with their bodies on the line, that nothing is more important right now. They are clarifying priorities and focus. Nothing is more important than doing everything we can to stop this genocide.
Two influential teachers in my life, Margaret (Meg) Wheatley and Joanna Macy, both talk about seeing with new eyes.
I just finished Meg’s most recent book, Restoring Sanity: Practices to Awaken Generosity, Creativity and Kindness in Ourselves and Our Organizations, which I highly recommend. In it, she talks about seeing clearly to act wisely and seeing the familiar with new eyes. She discusses how we never see reality, but rather are always seeing from our limited perception, and that we need to start from a place of acknowledging our limited view. She writes:
“As our seeing expands, it’s humbling to realize how little we perceive. Humility makes us curious to discover what else is out there. This is generous and kind perception. We acknowledge our filters and commit to practices to clear our vision. The more curious we are, the more we perceive. As we see more clearly, we often experience surprise and delight. The world is much more interesting and far less threatening as we take the time to see more clearly.”
This reminds me of the practice we have in the Plum Village tradition (the International Community of Engaged Buddhism founded by Thich Nhat Hanh) of seeing with sangha eyes. This practice is an acknowledgment that we are all limited in our view and that when we look together, and share perspectives, we see more. Looking with sangha eyes is a practice of sharing perspectives, of opening to one another’s view.
We need each other in order to see more clearly.
In Joanna Macy’s body of work, the Work that Reconnects, seeing with new eyes is described in the following way:
“Experiencing the reality of our inter-existence helps us see with new eyes. We can sense how intimately and inextricably we are related to all that is. We can taste our own power to change, and feel the texture of our living connections with past and future generations, with people of all colors and cultures, and with our brother/sister species.”
How might we act differently if we can truly see and feel our interconnectedness?
I believe the student movements we are seeing erupt now in the US are coming from this place. They are demonstrating this interconnectedness through action - that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere1, that the bombs being dropped on Gaza are financed (in part) by tuition dollars, that the police violence students are experiencing as they protest is a manifestation of the same violence that is leading to the bombing. The connections are so deep, and many. The resistance is an expression of this interconnectedness.
Seeing with new eyes can very disorienting. The past few days, I’ve felt discombobulated, like my head is farther away from my feet, like I’m walking in a bubble. Things far away have come into sharper focus, while things up close (which didn’t previously seem blurry) feel distorted. I can read things farther away better, but things up close are fuzzy. I’m not sure right now if my eyes need to adjust or if it’s actually a need for a different prescription, and I need to give it a little time to find out. And maybe that is how it is with new eyes. It takes time for our vision to shift. It takes time to adjust, to orient.
Seeing with new eyes can be disorienting.
Seeing with new eyes can help us see some things more clearly while other things get distorted.
We cannot unsee the things we have seen these 200+ days. Children’s body parts scattered outside, words that horrify me as I type them, which is perhaps all the more reason why they need to be typed. Multiple mass graves. Hospitals, universities, and refugee camps bombed. Parents wailing for their children and children wailing for their parents. Massacre upon massacre.
May this time help us see with new eyes.
Eyes that don’t accept war and genocide.
Eyes that don’t turn away
Eyes that bear witness and take compassionate action.
Eyes that cry for the loss of someone else’s child on the other side of the world.
Eyes that know no one should be hungry on this abundant, verdant planet.
Eyes that do not accept these realities.
Eyes that see clearly what exists and what could be.
Eyes that do not turn away from harm, violence, and pain.
Eyes that inspire action to heal.
Eyes that envision worlds where everyone is loved, cared for, free, has everything they need.
May this be a moment of clarity
May this be a moment of global solidarity
Against war and occupation everywhere
For justice, true freedom, liberation, peace.
Not the peace of quiet.
Not the peace of “we would like you to say that more calmly, please.”
Peace that is loud
Drowning out the deafening silence of the acceptance of violence.
With love, care, and solidarity,
Stephanie
Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail