Have I mentioned before that I am an early riser? If I have, then there is no sense in repeating myself. But if I haven’t, well then; I am an early riser. As such, I find myself with a lot of time patiently waiting for the rest of the world to wake up. On mornings that I go to the kitchen, I have purpose, but for the rest, in winter, that is a four hour wait till the sun peaks itself over the eastern horizon.

In that four hour wait, I do a lot of reading; both books and the computer. This morning was no exception, but without a book to read, and new news has not yet been posted, I was playing a bit of Spider Solitaire. After about thirty minutes, I noticed that my peripheral vision was blurry, so when I looked away from the screen, it took a long time to be able to refocus. Until it did, everything was out of focus and so my awareness of my surroundings did not register until my eyes adjusted.

My optometrist told me that this is normal, and the way to improve the situation was to lift my eyes from the page or from the screen more often and then actively focus on distant objects, be it across the room or street etc. etc.. I guess that three or four hours focusing on a book or screen is too much. Who knew?

As I mentioned, this morning was the same, but this time it got me to thinking about how we often approach life just like that. Cliché’s are popping into my mind like crazy as proceed with this thought, but I’ll try to avoid them.

What I find very humorous, is when a group of people form a specific society to deal with an issue such as Greenpeace, or Save the Whales, or Save the Trees, they call them a focus group. Don’t get me wrong, I think these groups are important and have a place in society, but I want to focus on their focus. So often when I hear or read of their endeavors, I find that their focus is very similar to my focus after I have had my face in a book for a couple hours. Tunnel vision is vision without reasonable peripheral influence. When we do that, we tend to stumble a lot.

And of course it is no different with life on the street or addicted living; the focus is not on life, but rather the next meal or fix. Often they cannot see the cure for pills that are their primary focus. But for most of them, their focus on their lifestyle is what prevents them from expanding their focus thus affording them the ability to see that there is more to life than what they are currently experiencing.

At Potters Hands, whether at the kitchen, the Fellowship, through mentorship programs, or any other effort, we do our best to expand the focus of these individuals so that as soon as their vision clears, they are better able to make different choices. Often when they see that someone actually cares, their ability to see differently grows, and that is all we are after.

So don’t forget to look up from your page every once in a while. It’s surprising what you might see.

Chris