Vision



flickr/squeezymoose

If you've ever been to the eye doctor, you're familiar with the contraption on the left.  Even if you've had the same prescription for the past 10 years, you still have to go through the motions of verifying the prescription.

The doctor sits you down, and you look through it to a far wall with some letters on it.  The doctor then selects different lenses and asks you to compare whether the first one was better/clearer or the second one.

Through this process, you and the eye doctor narrow down the choices as to which lenses suit you best for how your vision is at the current moment.

Which brings us to this....


Sometimes I need to take on a different lens.  Sometimes when I sense critical feelings welling up inside of me (such as when I'm looking at my stomach/abdomen), I try to change the lens.  Sometimes it's through the eyes of a photographer or artist, sometimes it's the eyes of a lover (real or imagined).  The point is that we are not only our own worst critic, but we also look at ourselves/scrutinize ourselves much more closely than anyone else.  By imagining someone else looking at us, we take a step back.  It's an issue of perspective more than anything else.


that got me thinking about a quote from Michaelangelo (who unfortunately doesn't have a verified twitter account): 

“In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it.”

Well... isn't that we're all doing in regards to weightloss/healthgain? In our heart of hearts, we see the person that is trapped behind the fat (in another tweet over the weekend I said "Too bad I can't make my fat do the workouts and let the rest of my body relax. Excess body fat is a hostage taker.").  Just like a statue is imprisoned by the marble around it, our healthy selves are imprisoned by the fat around it. 

Stephen is right -- we are each sculptors and artists and it's our duty to liberate the art that is our true self, if not to add beauty and joy to the world, but to liberate the person stuck inside.