Sunday Special: Turning a Blind Eye

I have severe myopia (near sightedness). Like, horrible. Fortunately, with corrective lenses, this is only something I usually only have to be aware of for a few seconds morning and night before and after taking my contacts out. I started wearing contacts when I was thirteen, and there have been a few times since then that I have had to go back to wearing my glasses for a week or two--usually because I have lost one of my contacts and I can't very well be going around with only one good eye.

I hate wearing my glasses. The last time I lost a contact, I realized just how much I hate wearing them all the time. My eyesight is so bad that I couldn't even but on my make-up without difficulty. I had to get so close to the mirror in order to see that not only did I go cross-eyed, but I couldn't get my eyeliner pencil at the correct angle because it's about 6 inches, and I was only giving it 2 inches between the mirror and my face.

What people don't realize is that not having my contacts or glasses in doesn't make me completely blind. I can still see things, they just happen to look . . . furrier than normal. People have no individual features, but the basic shape is still there. I can still make sense of most of what is going on around me. For example the "how many fingers" game. I may not be able to see your individual fingers, but I know the basic shape a hand makes when holding up two or five fingers. I guess you can say I know what it's like to not see things clearly (literally).

Sometimes I think that we take out our "spiritual" contacts when it comes to things in this world we live in. We thinking that not seeing something clearly will make it so we don't become affected by it. We use our self inflicted blindness as an excuse; "I just ignore it when people swear" "I fast forward through that part" "I skipped those pages".

I don't know about you, but I have come to learn that I am extremely affected by the things I subject myself to. The images I see, the words I hear, the things I read. And I used to make up excuses too--I used to take out my contacts and think that fast forwarding through a scene or trying to ignore bad language made it so it didn't wear on me. I would skim through scenes in books, because that way I wasn't really ingesting it. But the thing is . . . I was. It had a major affect on me in ways I wouldn't even have thought about.

It changed the way I viewed other people, the thoughts that came to my head. And I learned that once I saw something, it was filed away somewhere, waiting to pop up what I didn't want it. It changed the way I felt.

I'm not perfect. I still make mistakes and make excuses. Sometimes I find myself with my spiritual contacts out. But I think that once I learn to view the world through my spiritual lenses, not only am I going to be better able to see the good, but I'm going to better able avoid the bad. We live in a world that perverts sex, language, relationships, freedom, morality, and even religion. But we also live in a beautiful world with wonderful advances in technology. A world that is full of good people, and good things.

In Sunday school last Sunday, my teacher said something that has stuck with me. He said, "You can't stop the birds from flying, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair." So, I'm not saying that we should stick to the scriptures as our only form of literature, or only watch Disney cartoons, and listen to hymns. I love movies and music and books. I'm saying, seek out the good in the world, whatever that may be to you. Know your own limits; know what affects you, and stay away from it.

Stop looking at the world in a haze because you turn a blind eye to everything in it. Put on your corrective lenses and see things clearly! Life is better that way.