“This above all: to thine own self be true.”
—William Shakespeare

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If today was the last day you could write, what would you write?

I’ve thought a lot about this prompt—contemplating what final words could possibly be heard in the darkness of today’s this or that, tit for tat. But again and again, nothing came to my mind. 

Until now. 

If today was the last day I could write, I would write about love. Not the clichéd candied-heart kind. But the life-giving kind. The kind that can be difficult to see in life’s struggles when wars—here, there, everywhere—wear down, wear away. But also the kind that patiently and faithfully allows the wearing to lead to the core to restore vision from division, turning darkness to light. 

My First Eye Exam

When I was five, my mom took me into the city for an eye exam. That was my first memory of a metropolis. While the buildings wowed me with their majesty, the sidewalks scared me with their clanky metal grates. I cautiously crossed over, certain I’d fall into their depths or something from beneath would seize my feet. Until then, my world had been wide open, living in the middle of rolling pastures on the outskirts of a farming community of 550. The earth had been beneath my feet. Seeing the eye doctor for the first time broadened my view. 

Every year since, my mom would take me to the eye doctor, and every year, I’d get new glasses with thicker lenses. Later in elementary school I told Tammy Parks during a sleep over that I thought I was going blind. From my kid perspective, my eyesight would eventually get to its end. Tammy told her mom at breakfast. Her mom chuckled, like Moms do when kids say the darndest things. But that darn thing was no laughing matter to me. 

I had blurry vision. And it was getting worse. 

Ugly is as Ugly Does

In middle school, Angie Ferguson’s little brother innocently pointed out that I had “ugly” glasses. At least, that’s what I heard.  

“Your glasses are really thick,” he had said. 

His comment stopped me in my seventh-grade tracks. They are? I thought. I never noticed before. I never forgot after that. I was sure that everyone thought my “coke-bottle” glasses were ugly. Absolutely sure of it. 

Like a camera needs to be in focus to take good photos, as well as have a clean clear lens and correct lighting, our eyes require the same. Multiple factors affect how well or how poorly we see. For me, I eventually went from ugly glasses in middle school to painful contacts in high school to surgically implanted lenses in my 40s to eventually back to wearing glasses in my 50s when my vision worsened again. I still have implanted lenses, but I also wear glasses. At least now, they’re not so ugly thick. 

Seeing More Clearly

My latest glasses are retro Walmart ones. I chose these after deciding to stop paying ridiculous prices for rimless frames in hopes of not drawing attention to my glasses. But I also thought it was high time I made peace with my spectacles, after all they did help me see better. I spotted my 80s-style frames, tried them on, and smiled. Yes, those were the ones. Yes, I was seeing more clearly. 

Blindsided

My good friend, Bobby Blackmon, had to come to peace with his vision too. His story was my childhood fear. When Bobby was five years old, he was sitting at the kitchen table drawing, and then he couldn’t see. 

And then he could. 

And then he couldn’t.

I met Bobby at a conference where he led a session about public speaking. I didn’t realize until halfway through, that he was blind. But when I later met him and became friends, I quickly decided that Bobby sees better than most, helping me to see even more clearly too. 

Bobby listens. He laughs. He speaks with empowerment. He feels the presence of others. Bobby exudes love and allows it to lead him beyond the darkness of this or that, tit for tat. 

An Eye-opening Concept

Years ago, I heard the idea of “order, disorder, reorder.” It spoke to me so loudly that I wrote it down. Then after a doozy of disordering in my 50s, I came to believe that this concept is another way of saying the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Through my most recent ordering/disordering/reordering, I learned to identify my feelings and their origin, in which I discovered I wasn’t feeling much love. I was certain love was there, but I couldn’t see it, as it was too often distorted by overwhelm, sadness, anger, fear, and frustration. 

Through this, I learned to stop trying to pull myself up by bootstraps when I didn’t have any bootstraps and to stop trying to skip past mad and sad to always be with glad. I learned that becoming more self-aware by asking tough questions was an act of self-love, not of weakness. And that coming to terms with both the fullness and emptiness of life allows for sorting through…to get through…to more clarity. 

Questioning for the Sake of Self-Love

Ironically, the very questions I learned to ask when seeking truth as a journalism student back in the ‘80s, were and are the very questions I need to continually ask myself: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

Why am I feeling this way (or not feeling at all)?
What is going on? What’s happening in my physical body and head?
When did this begin?
How do I get through this, so I don’t stay stuck in this?
Where have I been? Where am I now? Where am I going?
Who is my community? 

Who am I?

I learned that at the core of asking curious, yet tough questions, self-love sat, patiently waiting. My body, my being, beautiful, holy, worthy of honor. Worthy of asking bold questions that can lead the way out of ourselves and back into our truest selves. Out of dualistic perspectives of denial or condemnation, glad or sad, this or that, tit for tat. And instead, learning to love in both the fullness and emptiness of life, for ourselves and for one another.

Love Provides More Clarity

Although I have sometimes lost sight of it, love has lived within my core, guiding me through the fog of forgiveness of others, and mostly, and eventually, of myself. Teaching me that I am worthy, regardless of condemnation’s damnation. Regardless of what my mind can conjure. Love has taught me to see more than my blurry myopic view of myself and of others. That our wealthy and poor, our men and women, our country folk and those who live in cities, our politicians and caregivers and our engineering minds and creative souls are all lost to some degree, in some season, in any given part of our days. Needing to be found. Needing to be loved, to extend love, to find love for one another, to find love in and for ourselves. 

We all need love. The kind that moves, evolves, shapes, and shakes hardened hearts and heads into more palatable people. The kind that lies within if we agree to see beyond our own nearsightedness.  

Reality encompasses it all—the mad, sad, and glad. 
Love helps us see it all—more clearly. 
And to be in it all—more fully.   

If today was the last day I could write, I would write about love, specifically self-love and universal love, as in better self, better world.

Be Momentous! 🌎

Love self. ❤️ Love others. ❤️