CC MO Apr. 2013 Portland, OR
I’m taking off my rose-colored glasses.
They never fit quite right.
Things begin to look a little blurry when you put them on, a little naive, over and under inflating the challenges and joys of life.
Sometimes, when I look out, I see nothing but beauty, ecstasy, the thrill of future dreams coming into life, one soft rose petal at a time.
And that’s great for a little while,
But then I’ll miss all the beauty straight in front of me. Too farsighted. Drats.
Other times, I put them on, consumed by the thrill of the moment right here, the dance, the romance, the pleasure in the here and now, that I forget about long term consequences of decisions and how to create a future of hope of joy. Nearsighted. Drats.
But I don’t want to live that way anymore.
I want to see in plain vision, in living colour.
To see things as they are, not as I idealize them to be.
To stare down the hard, cold realities of life, like death, and aging, and growing up, and leaving friends, or having friends leave you, as you move on and move forward. To meet with courage each of these realities in a way that melts away fear, turning it instead into a soft-glowing candle of acceptance.
Accepting that my twenties will come to end, and my 30s and 40s too, for that matter, and I will not live in a pseudo-forever young state that’s stuck in the past and evades responsibility for the future.
I want to accept that my parents will die one day, and find abundant ways to thank them for specific fond memories I have of them. Perhaps they won’t understand, and consider me an a maudlin sentimentalist. But when they die, and die they will, I know they will have heard every bit of my appreciation, words having been spoken, words having been heard and digested into the heart.
I want to accept that much of life is finding joy in the daily-s, not mountain highs of bucklist completions, but that doesn’t make life itself any less exciting or beautiful. After all, there is much opportunity to be had in menial tasks, like grocery shopping, for example. When we were kids, my dad used to run down the aisle, cart in tote, and then hop on the cart about halfway down the aisle. “Weeeeeeee!” This only worked when the nursing home bus filled with seasoned seniors had left the store, and the clueless four year trying to help Mom has gone to bed… he’d usually do this with, say, the 8 PM grocery shopping crowd. I still catch myself hopping on the grocery cart for a ride, too, sometimes. What can I say, it is fun.
Creating joy like that in the daily-s allows me to see the reality that life can still be beautiful even in despair. Because perhaps the worst thing about white-knuckling life in rose-colored glasses is robbing ourselves of the opportunity to feel the most raw and real parts of life. It makes way for someone to hold your hand when you’re truly at your lowest, proving that you will not be left alone in your sorrow, sweet child. It enables you to fully enjoy life’s most pleasurable experiences without the background of worry, nothing robbing you of intense joy, nothing tainting something so beautiful with cobwebs of anxiety. Instead of seeing life skewed the way I want it, I’ll look up when I can’t get out of my head. The cathartic stars will remind me to see the night sky daily, not just walk around aimlessly underneath it, but instead, to really soak it in, each sparkle singing of illimitable mysteries that cannot be easily solved. Hindsight may be 20/20, but there’s clarity to be found when we decide not to sugar coat our lenses of the world.
Un-squint your eyes.
Un-scrunch your face.
Open up your hands.
Look toward the sun.
Let the light in.
Melissa Otterbein 