Seeing the Invisible

Seeing the Invisible You are going to make a decision everyday how you want to live: whether it’s going to be by what you see or just trust that the not yet seen is much better. Sight is powerful but limited. We recently had a two-day training on suicide prevention, and it’s amazing the statistics on suicide not just globally but even here in Canada. And this is what baffles me, the common refrain from survivors: I looked around and couldn’t see anything to live for again! Helen Keller, blind and deaf all her life, was asked what could be worse than blindness and she answered: To have sight but no vision. She was the first blind and deaf person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. Eyes that look are many, but eyes that see are few. Vision talks about seeing beyond your present reality; seeing beyond the physical. It talks about seeing the invisible. Steve Job, the Apple giant, in his commencement address at Stamford University in 2005, made this profound statement:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path; and that will make all the difference.

To focus only on what you can see could be discouraging: the bills, the wrinkles, the tragedies, the pain, the misunderstandings, and so on. To focus only on happenings at the present could be demoralizing. Two days you shouldn’t worry about every week. One is yesterday, with all its wonders and blunders; with all its pleasure and pressure. Good news! It’s gone. Let it go! The other is tomorrow, with all its uncertainties. You just have to trust, like Steve Job, that the dots will somehow connect … tomorrow. Nothing more. The only important day is today! That’s not too much to handle. Someone said: “Any person can fight the battles of just one day. It is only when we add the burdens of yesterday and tomorrow that we break down.” I take solace in the words of a great writer of old simply called Paul:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Tunji Olasunkanmi