Fear is akin to a creeping darkness that dulls your vision slowly until you can’t go another step forward in the dark. It is the dark that calls for light. We want light so we can see. But what about seeing in the dark? For this there was the saying my Mother used to have that she would repeat on appropriate occasions. Usually those occasions were ones that faith, trust and willingness-to-wait were needed. The full saying is:
Go as far as you can see, when you get there you will see farther.
She even had this engraved on a silver Paul Revere bowl to celebrate my Dad finishing Dental School back in the 60’s. This bowl has been in my awareness all of my life. It travelled with us to the new dental office in Houston, Texas Mom and Dad built when his practice started. The one where we lived in the back rooms sleeping on the floor (Mom said it made her back feel good.) until the practice brought in enough money for us to move to an apartment, then a house. The bowl came along to California when Dad took up the posting of Chief of the Dental Clinic at the VA Hospital. It eventually moved to the desk Dad put in their bedroom when he gave up his home office for our daughter to use the room as a bedroom when we shared the house for years when my family returned to the US from Australia and helped looked after my Mother. It finally moved back to the office, now my own office (we bought the family house) and writing room and Mother is in heaven and Dad married to a dear and perfect woman my Mother adored and lives in Indiana.
Point your toes in the direction you will go.
This bowl and indeed the sentiment it stood for and proclaimed is really the only instruction for enlightenment and faith you need. “Go as far as you can see….”; this assumes seeing and that seeing is important. Seeing can mean clarity, trust, willingness, indeed any quality of faith and love you have available to you right this minute. “……when you get there..” implies you will get where you need/want to go; that going is inevitable and as natural a progession as morning following night. “…..you will see further.” certainly promises a tomorrow if not eternity itself and all that implies. Tomorrow reminds us of another day. As Scarlet O’Hara would say in “Gone With The Wind” “Tomorrow IS another DAY!” Often this is all we need. To be reminded that another day will be coming. That this day of pain, loss or utter confusion is not the whole story.
I have used this philosophy to move from one country to another, to sit bedside at the hospital while a loved one dies, to watch in silence as a child does the complete opposite of what you would have done and to forge ahead with this very blog and my twelvemonth of self love.
Where can you use this in your life today. Where can’t you see? Is it a relationship, a new business, a loss of income? All I know is this. You can see something right now. It is enough. Ask for your eyes to be opened to seeing exactly what you need to see for this moment. Give thanks for what and how you can see today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Tomorrow, you will, indeed, see farther.
