I thought I would summaries the "Looking beyond what's in front of us" post. *Sweat* Sorry it was so long, I really don't know what I was on that night when I wrote it, lol!
Looking Beyond What's In Front of Us *Reviewed and Edited*My familiy isn't one that your ordinary bystander would consider loving but I would disagree. We're not touchy feely, we aren't necessarily best friends, but we know that if we were in any trouble that we'd be there for one another.
So, I think it's kinda rare for me to take something my father told me and ponder on it. But thankfully I did, because it helped me in a way learn another lesson of life. My father always told me when I was just a kid "Son, when your eyes are tired, you must always look far away." Intrigued how this is a life lesson? Read on.
I study law, and as you know, law involves reading pages and pages of neverending cases. Honestly, some cases are 70 pages long. I also play computer games, A LOT (too much)! What do these two things have in common? They both give you bad vision. Therefore it's not uncommon for me to have really tired and strained eyes. As a result, although my eyesight is normally -0.75 on both sides, during semester it normally goes up to -1.50.
I was coming home from an exhausting day of uni after a 9-6pm day. Stressed by the burden of exam and from reading cases, my eyes were blurry and tired. I thought I'd follow my dad's advice and consciously look away at the distance (instead of just looking 'into' the distance).
Normally we're taught to look at things just in front of us; the letters on a page; the car in front of us; the computer screen, etc etc. Or even on the bus, we look outside just to avoid looking at people on the bus (you know what i mean!), but even then, we tend to blur our vision and let the scenery just pass us by. Not today.
I suddenly noticed how beautiful Mt Eden was, I noticed all the little details that I hadn't noticed before, the awkward pedestial on top of the hill, I could see tourists on the mountain, details that passed me by everyday whilst I passed them by. What was amazing was how clear this all was considering I could barely see 2 metres in front of me because I was exhausted.
I took a look out at the city too, noticed how unique Auckland really is. It is a metropolis built on mountainous land. I looked out to the tall buildings and saw the people working in them. And then suddenly, things just became clearer. Not mentally, but I mean that I could see clearer. My eyes somehow managed to focus on those distant objects and I could see them clearly. I was amazed, my eyes felt less tired, and when I drew my vision back to things in the bus, I noticed that I saw things at close range clearer as well. My whole body and mind were strangely refreshed.
After that, a lot of things clicked in my mind:
i) So many of us are tied down by things that are figuratively 'burdening us', we look up at this burden but we often forget to look beyond what's in front of us. We tend to look to things like when the next assignment is due, or when the exams are, or when the next presentation is, what is for dinner, etc. However, we forget to look at things ahead, the things that really matter. Things like what we want our life to mean, or what we want our lives to be like in 5 years time. Because when you look forward, you understand that all these hindrances that are "NOW", are really just molehills in the whole course of our life.
Instead, every once in a while, we need to remind ourselves of the real mountains in our lives. How do we do this? We look beyond what's in front of us.
ii) We get so tired from these "NOW" things that constantly drain us. Sometimes, we need to look beyond to see where we want to head. Eg. When searching maps, If I were to look for only the next street I need to get to, instead of figuring out all the streets that will get me to my intended destination, I would be constantly getting lost and constantly re-searching the map for my next street. Aren't our lives like that? If you are constantly losing value in the things you do, is it because you're only looking at what's in front and not beyond? Try to look out for your destination instead of just where you want to turn next. I'll share another story with you. In days where farmers used to manually plough the ground before planting. The son of a farmer m who was amazed by his dad's ability to plough in straight lines, asked his dad, "Dad, how do you do it so perfectly". The farmer said "Son, when you grab your hoe, you must not look in front of you, instead you have to set your eyes on a spot on the horizon and just keep moving towards that point in the horizon. That's how I do it."
iii) Knowing where we're going sometimes makes it easier to head in that direction. Looking ahead puts things in perspective. In other words, sometimes we forget why we do the things we do. Often times, we don't feel fulfilled in our lives because it seems meaningless. If we look beyond, and find out what our goals are, such as being successful by the time you're 40, then we find meaning in the things that we do everyday in working towards that goal. For me, this was to be successful in my career, and knowing that I wanted to be successful helped justify all this studying I'm doing (I'm not doing it for fun you know?!).
I guess a summary of all these lessons, although it is a point in itself is that,
sometimes we find that we see things in front of us clearer after we spend some time looking beyond them.
Thanks dad, I know you didn't mean to impose such a deep philosophical teaching into my life (or did you?), but thanks. My eyes thank you.
