Corrective vision

One of the simplest, but most poignant questions I've ever had posed to me was this:

"How do you SEE the world?"

At the time, I was sitting in an auditorium full of admitted students in SGM at USC, all 17 and 18-year-old seniors looking to leave the constraints of high school and eagerly tromping ahead into the next big chapter of their lives.

"How do you SEE the world?"

At that point in our (still-young) maturation, sight had everything to do with what you saw and not how you interpreted it. I remember thinking, when the professor at the front of the room planted this kernel of thought in my brain, that I didn't understand. I SAW what was set before me. Isn't that what sight is all about? From a young age, you learn to see and appreciate the details of the things you come across -- ask any high school graduate to describe for you a wintry scene, write a paragraph about the intricacies of the human heart, or dissect the strokes of a Monet painting, and (with much grumbling) it can be done.

But ask that same student to tell you HOW they see the world, whether it be in pockets of patterns, numbers and figures, or abstract concepts, and he wouldn't be able to tell you. Until I heard that question thrust so casually into the air, I hadn't ever stopped to think about my own frame of vision.

"HOW do you see the world?"

The significance of this question was, of course, many-fold, but perhaps the most important reason she posed the question was for direction. In answering, or attempting to answer, that question, we would each gain insight into our talents, our expectations, our future; what made us tick.

Those who see the world in terms of numbers and figures -- measuring days in minutes, achievements in points -- would be well-suited for careers in engineering, accounting, finance, something wherein their measure of success can be determined by a given point system.

Those who see the world in patterns, series of events, would probably fare best in history or literature, a profession wherein their contributions would come from a big-picture mentality.

And those who think in abstract concepts, pinpointing various elements of their everyday lives as significant and looping in philosophy and sociology -- those are the crazies, the revolutionaries.

So many paths, all beginning with a renewed definition of sight. I think about that question a lot these days, about how I SEE the world, because I know with each new experience I take one step closer to an as-yet fuzzy definition of sight. How I see the world will determine how I can contribute to it, though I can't truly see the world until I've become a part of it.

It's a paradox, that.

"How do you SEE the world?"

"HOW do you see the world?"