BATTLING ADVERSARIES and DEMONS
Friday, Feb. 21, 2020
Look your opposite in the eye.
Get close, stand close – go nose to nose.
Don’t shrink, don’t blink. Who knows, something might get resolved, or a nose might get broken, or both?
Not a staring or glaring contest – not for publication, but for a closer and more in-depth examination.
Keep looking, deeper looking, deep thoughts are in there, somewhere. This is where our character is revealed – no need for building. It already exists. Refinements and tweaks are possible, but life-altering or direction reversing choices are rare indeed. Eyes aren’t about the window-dressing of blue, or grey, or hazel – not about black, or brown or green – but they are the ink wells to see where depth goes, it’s likely not run dry, where courage is summoned and admitting wrongdoing is possible, confessing of deeds, and promising to make amends.
Eyes are required. This does not work for the visually-impaired or for those sighted ones who refuse to see.
The words of Theodore Roosevelt will substitute for backbone on those days when we feel our own requires shoring-up:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Your opponent today is not the person in the white trunks in the far corner of the ring, your opponent stands closer, just as tall – could be a twin, but that’s not what you win, because today you go eye-eye and aye to aye with yourself. The big reveal, look close as you stand close to a mirror. It’s a scary sight to see what only you can see. At first, it seems fuzzy, but you can see – we all can see what lives down that rabbit-hole of thought and mystery – known only to yourself. Nobody else ever will know you that well, that deep.
To be sure, get a better view – stand close, stand tall, look straight ahead – look him in the eye. Now, turn on the light. It blinds you at first, but pupils adjust, and we can now get lost in the face and the hair, check for a good shave and nose hairs, examine the surface scars life left and notice the ears are elongated now, gravity does that. But enough of these diversions…
Back to the eyes, look your opponent in the eye.
