Looking Beyond What's In Front of Us
My dad and I, well, my family and I, are a bit unusual. That's not unusual in itself, I mean every family is unusual in its own ways, and maybe because we're unusual that would make my family pretty usual. Well if you managed to read and understand that, you may feel free to continue on reading this post (Doh! totally not related to what I wanted to say). Anyways my familiy isn't one that seems close to outsiders but I think that the unspoken rule in my family is that if any one of us gets into trouble, for instance if any of us got into a fight, let's just say... the rest of the family would be onto the enemy like donkey kong. I've learned that we don't have perfect families, yet thankfully my family is still together after all of these years and I'm sure somewhere there is implication of the L word (the one that makes the world go around).

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. What my father told me is "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 like 70 pages long (and these aren't the NIGHTMARES even), and they don't even come with pictures! 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. This means I can't really read a number plate of a car about 15 metres ahead of me.

I was coming home from an exhausting day of uni, I think it was a 9-6pm day (yeah I know; not all that different from a normal working day). Exam pressures had already begun to affect me and I had been reading cases, my eyes were blurry and tired. While sitting on the bus on the way home, I made a conscious decision to just look out the window and look at things that were far away. Do you know what I mean? 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 (an article on bus rides will have to wait another day though!), but even then, we tend to blur our vision and let the scenery pass us by. Not today. I suddenly noticed the beautiful Mt Eden, I noticed all the little details that I hadn't noticed before, the Aerial, how I could see tourists on the mountain, details that passed me by everyday whilst I passed by them. I took a look out at the city too, noticed how unique Auckland is because it was a city built on hilly 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 going on in the bus, I noticed that I saw things at close range clearer as well. My whole body and mind also felt strangely refreshed.

After that, a lot of things clicked in my mind:
i) So many of us are tied down by things that are directly in front of us, but we 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 that are at a distance, 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 researching 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. 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!).

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.