The Light and Dark With New Eyes

A guest post by Stella Darkely

In this largely isolated world that we live in -- in the lonely crevices of our mind, we search out the little things throughout our days and nights that catch our attentions and keep us from blinking. We look for, and anticipate, the hues of a rainbow as much as the wet, glistening rain. We hope that things will remain constant, even as they change with the seasons, and we search our surroundings for signs that "things are looking up".

Unfortunately, all of this we do with eyes that are predisposed to only seeing that which fits our schema of experience. We trick our minds into "shoulding, woulding, and coulding," while we never actually do that which we want. We wait for tomorrow in order to begin attaining the things we wanted yesterday, let alone today. We wait for the perfect moment to splurge on a vacation, a meal, a bottle of wine -- for the right mood and opportunity to tell someone we love them, even if we know they won't say it back. What we fail to see, over and over again, with our shielded eyes, is that tomorrow will never arrive for us because we are living all of our tomorrows, today, yet, never fully cognizant of the opportunities always lingering in full view.

Tonight, I am seeing with new eyes -- fully appreciative of the full scope of the worldview that I choose to adopt. Tonight, I am no longer gazing out at the world behind the restrictive glare of my eyeglasses. ... I allowed a surgeon to cut into my eyes recently -- entrusting him to reshape the defective cornea that were the cause of the hazy, milky, indecipherable "out there," that shaped my perception of my environment. Now I can see, unaided by any artificial prosthesis -- I see and hear, and feel my surroundings like never before -- appreciative of every hurdle and happiness in plain sight.

***

So, tonight, I probably "should have," finished reading an article that I need to have read in order to write a long overdue essay. Earlier today, I probably "should have," started my homework sooner, so that I would have time to do other things. I always tell myself: 'do the things that you must now so that you can do the things that you want to do later' but, as I near my 30s, my eyes increasingly widen to the fact that my idea of a perfect, uncluttered, responsibility-free "later," does not exist. I must create my future in the present.

If I want to be a writer...
if I want to be a filmmaker...
if I want to find a love...
if I want to make money...
if I want a better future...
a happy future...

I must do these things NOW, not later.

While I have no clear answers as to how I will navigate my way through school, work, and other responsibilities while, simultaneously, living in my newly created present, I can promise myself that: I will not put down my pen when inspired, just so that I can finish my overdue assignments; I will not ignore the occasional palpitations of my heart, signaling to me my loneliness; I will not put off for tomorrow the things that I could have done today to make me feel that I am one step closer to the happy future that I can now see clearly, on the horizon, with my freshly healed, eager, eyes.