Everyday life changes, ever so slightly, with each new season and era. The ideas we explore, inventions we put forth and changes we adapt for human life. As time goes on, evolution takes shape, improvements in society take hold and dreams become that much more real…
It is the year, 2020. In optics, 20/20, describes “perfect vision” — to be able to see clearly and effectively, without modification. This year, in particular, has differentiated what is essential and important versus what is inessential and less important — making it clear what matters in the world we live in.
What are the things that matter?
Healthiness. Objectivity. Improvement.
With no priority or even desire for healthiness, how can anyone seek much of a fulfilling life in this vast and, at times, harsh world that we find ourselves in?
If we lack objectivity, how can anyone know and differentiate fact from fallacy in the swathes of information that flood the wells of human knowledge?
How can anyone as a person improve oneself and one’s own world if one lacks the patience and determination to overcome one’s own flaws, insecurities and weaknesses, in tandem with others facing theirs?
I have often heard that “the world is more divided today than it ever has been” in both the public and private spheres through recent years.
Perhaps…but I’m not really a historian, so I wouldn’t be able to say if that’s really accurate or not.
What I do know is that much of the discord reverberating throughout the known world today is by our own self-doing, brought upon ourselves by ourselves, blindly or not.
…what is there to do, then? How do we become healthy again? Where do we regain that objective perspective? What can we do to improve both ourselves and our respective worlds?
Well, the answers lie right before us.
Acknowledge the world, its many people and its strifes as they are. Heal the wounds, past and fresh, with a determination to bring good health to you and the stranger that also lives in your world through harmony and goodwill. Bring mannered and thorough accountability to the exchange of ideas and interactions in both the public and private worlds that we each inhabit, carefully investigating the truth of matters before leaping to conclusions that can pain both ourselves and others. Finally, dare to reach for an improved version of yourself, accumulate each step — one by one — of that fulfilling journey of self-improvement and extend a hand to others that have fallen in theirs. They may just need it even if it doesn’t necessarily seem so…
We live in the Age of Convenience.
If we wish to have a meal, prepared and ready-to-eat, many of us need only order it from the touch of a phone. Clothes? Ship it. Someone to date? Swipe it.
We say things, write things, do things on a whim because of the power we have to do so in the society in which we live, both in actuality and perception. Patience is and has become a lost art. Impartiality is an artifact rarely seen in the character of people today.
Convenience — it seems — outweighs honor, due diligence and good faith in the way we converse, interact and decide.
What have we become of ourselves but people left in want for something more meaningful, virtuous and true?
Superhero movies flood the screens with ideals and cautionary tales, but we cannot replicate or heed them to much effect — at least not widely, it seems.
Thus becomes our world.
20/20 vision.
If we can instead see what we need, we can reach our hands out to grasp at what we lack. We might not be able to clutch the things we need inside our grasp over the span of a day or even a week — but over time, surely, certainly, absolutely, we’re going to have what we need to find that peace we seek within ourselves and in the world at large.
Whatever the circumstances, I believe, I and those who put in the work, can still succeed with flying colors. In slowly transforming the world into what it needs to be and the times towards the place it needs to go…
That promised land, where peace on earth exists and goodwill towards men reigns free.
Afterword
How are you?
It’s me, J.D.
I hope, wherever you are in the world, whatever time it is where you are, you can find light in my words, no matter how miniscule they may be. If even for a few seconds or even more. I hope the upcoming year is an even better one for you as much as I wish it to be for me.
Warm regards and blessings,
J.D.
