I've always been interested in eyes. I know how funny that must sound but it's true. I feel like I can look into someones eyes and see straight through to their souls. People's mouths lie both with word and action but their eyes can't lie. But there is more to it than that. I can't explain what I see when I look into someone's eyes. It always amazes me! People are so complicated and unique and beautiful! That's I suppose what you can say I see.
I feel like I can't trust someone completely if I can't look in their eyes and yet looking into someone eyes and trying to talk to someone in person is so hard for me. I feel like a contradiction.
All of this thought led me to my mirror, looking at my own eyes trying to see what I could. They were blue. Not a bright blue like some but blue none the less. I've always loved the deep blue color of my eyes, I always thought it was a good representation of my soul. Deep, blue, and kind of cold. But I had to look past the color to see what I'd come to find. To me my eyes looked tired. I saw sadness. I saw a sense of being lost. I saw fear. I saw a general dislike of myself. I saw weakness. I saw all things I didn't want to see.
But then I found myself wondering do my eyes really look like that? Is that really the person other people see? Maybe my internal struggles cloud what I see in my own my eyes.
That made me wonder how other people saw my eyes and me. Would it be what I saw? Would I want to hear what they had to say? Would it perhaps be better than what I see? Would they see nothing at all? Would they even care to look?
I think we all look at things through colored lenses. Some lenses make things look better than they are and others make things look worse. Our lens for ourselves almost always show us nothing but the negative(or at least mine does). I am without a doubt my own worst enemy and as I stood in front of that mirror I felt the weight of my own judgements on my shoulders. I suddenly felt like I was dragging a couple hundred pounds of weight through the Sahara dessert. It broke my heart and it broke my heart to wonder how many other people around me, also feel this way.
All of the outside voices telling you how great you are can only do so much to improve your view of yourself. I believe you have to work hard to change the internal voices in your head and that is an ongoing hard battle for me. It's not something someone else can do for you.
But I believe that doesn't mean we should stop telling people how great they are. It doesn't mean we shouldn't take the time to look into dive into someone elses eyes and feel their pain and acknowledge that pain and work to lift them up. Because while none of that can repair everything a person is telling themselves(or what other people have told them or are telling them), it's still good to hear and it might just mean the world to someone. Our goal should always always always be to lift people up and not tear them down.
Life is short and you only get so many opportunities to tell a person how you feel about them and what you see when you look at them. You only get so many opportunities to enjoy a connection with someone. You only get so many opportunities to enjoy a moment with any one person.
So if you love someone tell them. If you think they are amazing or strong or if they've touched your life/blessed you or if they inspired you, tell them. Don't tell them this stuff just once, tell them over and over. It might not fix all their problems, it might not change the world, but it could be enough to keep them going. If you get the chance to spend time with someone you don't see often, do it. You never know when the chance you passed up on, might be the last.
But most importantly don't forget to love on yourself, to be kind to yourself, tell yourself your amazing and strong. The goal is to look into your own eyes and see a strong amazing human being that you love and are as kind to as you are anyone else.
Let's see if I can follow my own advice because it's devastating to look in the mirror and see none of that stuff. I'm not okay right now...and that's okay. I could blame it on a thousand different things but the reality is in the last few years I've allowed myself to become someone I'm not. I've beaten myself down more than anyone else possibly could. I know my own weaknesses better than anyone and I've used them against myself.
One day I'll be okay again. But right now I have a lot to learn and a lot of room to grow. The first step in that is being more kind to myself and seeing myself as a human being who is flawed, imperfect complicated but also amazing, unique, and worthy of love even when I feel I'm not.
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