Hi Friend
I like this journey of life. I just started a little fire in my chiminea, that Carl my neighbor gave me last year. I’ve made a few fires this week, sitting, reading and enjoying the flames and fragrance. Of course, the big news this week was the eclipse. I wandered out on my front lawn for a 93% coverage experience. It was reminiscent of COVID when we all just hung outside talking to our neighbors. I loved it.
I’m also doing one long run a weekend to train for my half marathon coming up at the end of the month. The professional speakers group I’m part of, ImpactEleven, provides a consulting conversation around my keynote and website positioning. I love a good critique. It was interesting, useful and valuable to hear a perspective from someone who has lots of exposure to others in this business and didn’t know my work at all.
Also, my son is visiting my daughter, and they are on a weekend excursion to Lisbon. What a life.
I didn’t buy eclipse glasses so when I went out to see it, the sun didn’t look much different. The world was still. It felt overcast though there were no clouds. The sun still looked quite radiant, until my neighbor handed me his glasses. Then I saw it was almost completely covered. I was kind of shocked. I took the glasses off and looked again.
Those glasses revealed a reality that you saw too, I’m sure. Or pictures from it. We weren’t in the direct path but it did go over the corner of Oklahoma. I’ve seen video from Dallas and Austin where it went completely dark. Since I was sharing glasses, I’d look up, ooooh and ahhhhh and then pass them on.
LENSES BABY
When I returned inside, I immediately thought about how true to life that experience reflected. There are layers of reality co-existing all around us and depending on the lens we look through determines what we see. I thought of it from a spiritual perspective. I thought about it from a hope perspective. I thought about it from an optimism perspective.
Shoot, I thought about it from a love perspective. You and I can look at the same person and literally see entirely different things. What’s wild is both realities can be true. When I wasn’t wearing the glasses, the sun was shining bright, even if simultaneously being a bit dimmer. But I would have sworn nothing was blocking it.
TRUTH, REALITY, FACTS
This is the crux of all human conflict, isn’t it? We see someone’s behavior, actions, response or lack thereof and filter it through our lens. We declare what’s reality from our view and expect others to align accordingly. Or at least SEE it and acknowledge it’s validity. This plays out in personal and work relationships.
Reality and facts are both malleable. They can change, morph, expand and be altered over time or concurrently. They can exist in opposition simultaneously. Truth is more like gravity. It’s a principle outside our construct. I know there is/was a whole movement around #MyTruth. People still use that terminology. What I understand them to be communicating is #MyReality or #MyExperience. It is truly what they know, felt and encountered.
Instigating Ideas…
1. What epiphany did the eclipse unlock for you?
2. I dare you to put on someone else’s lens for a day.
3. Ask someone to critique your work.
4. Consider a current conflict and ascertain if it’s around truth, reality or facts.
The above philosophy assists me in empathy. It’s not just a matter of semantics; that business about truth, reality and facts. Understanding people and the world through that perspective empowers me with grace, curiosity, openness and acceptance. It also provides courage, conviction, boundaries and a willingness to take a stand.
WISDOM
I love learning. I literally embrace new thoughts, concepts or articulations of reality every single week. I mean, here we are experiencing it together. However, inviting someone in to assess, judge and examine is a little different. I may subconsciously avoid painful areas of my life (though it doesn’t feel like it). Someone else applying their lens to our reality is humbling. Try it.
Isn’t that wisdom, though? I want it to be. I’m grateful for an expert opinion on my work even if it hurts. If all I see is the sun, I want someone to show me there is a moon blocking 93% of my potential to illuminate the world around me! One of my motivations for these weekly instigators is to provoke you to self-evaluate and consider where your light might be eclipsed.
I hope this week you remain open to the possibilities of multiple realities existing simultaneously. Not in a multiverse kind of way, but in a human lens reality.