This morning, I rode my mountain bike.
The bike took me to the top of a nearby mountain.
The trees, mountain ranges, and various trails surrounded me.
My heart rate peaked in the high 180s.
The wind, slightly chilly, danced around me.
A distant waterfall was inaudible, and only visible.
Two dogs chased me up the mountain as I rolled over rocks, and logs, and various types of terrain.
As I sat at the top of the mountain, my beating heart was felt throughout my body.
This is how I am powerful.
I am powerful when I am connected to the power I am full of. My own breath and beating heart, the two dogs with me, and the mountains and trees that surrounded me.
Most of this scenery was something I saw with my two eyes.
If you’re looking at these words, I assume you have two eyes you’re using, too.
Sight.
Often, external.
It is an outward facing process.
You see the world around you.
You take in what you see.
Your mind creates meaning from what you see.
Call them "connections."
This meaning becomes your reality.
You call it truth.
Sometimes, you hold onto your truth tightly.
You hold onto what you know to be certain and safe. This is often what has always worked for you, and you hold onto it because it's all you know how to do.
Sometimes, you explore truth, and different ways of being, and you learn what you get from it.
Some truths make you feel unlimited and full of possibility and potential. While other truths may make you feel small and safe and secure. The more you explore different truths, or try on different constructs of this thing called “life,” the more you see.
Sometimes, your life becomes a quest to find truth.
Instead of holding onto your truth, or mindfully exploring different truths, you seek it. You crave it, insatiably. Whatever you find may never be enough, because you are always looking for the next version of reality you can try on.
None of this is good or bad.
What is true for you may not be true for me.
What is true for you may not be true for your closest friends, or your family.
What if the only meaning that existed is the meaning you create?
What if, reality, or what is true, or what is right, is not external from you?
What if you do not see it with your two eyes?
What if the reality you give power to begins internally?
If this is true, then this changes from an article about learning how to use your eyes to see to learning how to use your eyes to see how you feel within.
I feel powerful. Power is something I value.
I feel strong.
I feel connected to life.
These are things I have, and I create them with sight.
That’s all it is, sight.
Where you may see someone struggling and hurting, I see someone learning an important lesson. And I value learning. I don’t say this to be detached, I say it to acknowledge how my sight affects my feelings. I’m equally able to feel what someone who is struggling feels, and I know, a lesson is being learned. This is how I give value to difficult times.
And our sight evolves over time.
There is a reason why some “well aged” people may seem to be calm, peaceful, and loving.
When we live this way, it’s often because we’ve learned to evolve our sight to help us see the way we want to see.
To do this, we must become aware of our lens that affects the way we see.
To do this, we must take ownership over how we see.
To evolve our sight, we must accept the power we have to change how we see.
The meaning that we create for ourselves in our earliest years can often be the meaning that we live with for the rest of our lives.
But it doesn’t need to be when we learn how to use our two eyes.
