Seeing Clearly

A Just Three Min­utes Sto­ry by Don­na Marie Todd

I did some­thing total­ly out­ra­geous this month.
I paid some­one to pow­er-wash the exte­ri­or of my house because I was tired of look­ing at life through dirty windows.

While the man washed the dirt off out­side, I washed the win­dows on the inside.
When we fin­ished, my view of the riv­er was more beau­ti­ful than ever. As I sat down on the porch, a gor­geous sun­set spread itself across the sky and I could see every col­or clearly.

My friend­ly heron did a fly by.
Through my clean win­dows, I could see inter­lac­ing intri­ca­cy of her blue and grey feath­ers. What an utter­ly spec­tac­u­lar crea­ture she is! Watch­ing her fly across the expand­ing pur­ple-pink sun­set made my pow­er-wash­ing and inner sweat equi­ty worth every penny!

Which makes me won­der, isn’t a clear pic­ture of life worth almost any price?
It cer­tain­ly was when I had cataract surgery. I didn’t want to do it but the doc­tor threat­ened to pull my driver’s license, that’s how bad my vision was. “You’re look­ing through pil­low cas­es at a very blur­ry world” he said as he sched­uled the surgery.

The eye sur­geon was a leg­end in his own mind, but he was utter­ly right about see­ing clearly.
$3700 lat­er I could see beau­ti­ful­ly through the eye he worked on. But I was shocked to see some old woman’s face in the mir­ror as I walked in. Who was that? Oh no! She was me! When did I get that many wrin­kles? And how long had those cob­webs been draped across the ceil­ing? How could I not see those? They were huge!

Two weeks and anoth­er $3700 lat­er, I could read again!
I could see so well, I didn’t even need glass­es any­more! Wow! I was so excit­ed I spent an entire after­noon read­ing all the labels in my kitchen.

Psy­chother­a­py was equal­ly reveal­ing and cleared up my inner vision.
When I saw myself through a kinder lens, why I did cer­tain things was no longer so con­fus­ing. Ther­a­py cleaned the blind­ers of my child­hood and I’m so grate­ful for that. Best mon­ey I ever spent! 

See­ing clear­ly is very exciting.
It’s so reveal­ing and empow­er­ing, I won­der why I don’t do it more.

Ooo! Can you imag­ine what a clear view of pol­i­tics would look like?
Or reli­gion? Or sex­u­al­i­ty? It seems our lens­es have got­ten pret­ty dirty.

If we cleaned up our view and could see things more clear­ly, maybe what we don’t under­stand about each oth­er would make more sense.

© Don­na Marie Tood