Keeping Our Center ~ Day 115

“Open your eyes!” We have all heard this phrase, uttered in irritation or made as a plea, and telling us to lift the veil of denial. We have all chosen to be quite blind to something so obvious. We have all decided to ignore an attitude, a behavior, a bigoted joke, a cruel remark, a bold-faced lie.

It just makes Life so much simpler to keep things nice and smooth, no waves, no rough patches, no obstacles to climb over. We like nice. We like content. We like the absence of conflict. However, we also must admit, we know what a flat line on a heart monitor represents. Smooth, but dead.

One way to come to our senses is to open our eyes. To have the fog fade away, and choose to be aware and awake, and even alert. It is to claim it and name it, and since the beginning it has been the first step in the creative process. It is the way we tame the chaos, until the next whirlwind comes – which we know will be real soon.

Why do we so often choose to live blind? Why do we too frequently dwell in the darkness? Why do we create lives so dizzyingly fast we can barely navigate the blur?

I think one reason is fear. We are anxious facing reality. We get nervous when confronted with our true Selves. It is brutal to pay attention to the log in our own eye, rather than dwell on pointing out the speck in our neighbors. It is hard to admit our own lies, fabrications, or manipulations. We live in a guilt-free culture which does not seem to be ashamed of any behavior.

I believe another reason is our refusal to mature. Recently, I often find myself wondering out loud if I am stuck in the bickering, bullying, beauty pageant days of the 8^th Grade. Seeing is believing. Believing is seeing. We seem to believe in very little these days, and so our lives are shrouded in a thick fog.

I suspect another reason is that it makes us think we are getting away with something. We are pulling something off. I bet this is the result of being quietly and secretly cynical. We know the price tag of everything, but the value of nothing. We go with the flow, but flow is creating massive erosion and an enormous gap between the haves and the have nots.

I think one of the major reasons Jesus was such a crucifyingly offensive character, was how often he was basically just telling his followers, “Just open your damn eyes!” I think Jesus’ central message was simply to PAY ATTENTION and to TAKE NOTICE. This is your life you are living. I think he was often quite frustrated, and I would think he turned over more than a few tables.

What ticked Jesus off? When we claim not to know what we know we know. The Sermon on the Mount has a core message --DON’T PLAY DUMB WITH ME. It is like listening to a teenager tell you why they will just die if they don’t own this or that, or cannot go here or there, and are not allowed to indulge a whim or wish. The tragic thing these days, is that this is how the adults live as well.

Wake up. Be on the up and up. Get up and do something positive and productive, and, for God’s sake, can we please get down to growing-up. What I hear from today’s teens is consistently, “We just need the adults to act like adults!” I would hope we are up to the task. If we are not, we might as well live blind, because when you are in a full-blown downward spiral, the only thing you will see is the spinning and life sucking ground.

If one truly good thing comes out of this pandemic and the resulting quarantine, it just might be that we have opened our eyes. Maybe we will now accept Life on Life’s terms, not our own, or that of our culture. Maybe, just maybe, like Scrooge, we will wake up to all the blessing we have been missing, just not seeing with our hearts.  

Bill Grimbol