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The sun is brightly shining today. I love the warm glow it casts over the world.

As I was walking to the kitchen from my office I walked past the living room windows and could see the sun shining into the room. As I turned my view to look outside, I could see, through the window, the trees, the grass, the sky … but the window is terribly dirty. My children’s fingerprints are ALL over it, and the outside of the window could use a cleaning too. So the view from my living room is of a bright sunny world, but slightly filtered through dirty smudged glass.

If I didn’t know better I might think that the world from where I am standing is not clear. I might see the smudged glass and imagine that the world is smudged and dirty. I could look out at the sun shining on the world and wonder why it is so “frosted” or concealed.

Without the knowledge that the glass is dirty, my perspective is skewed.

Clarity comes when I see what IS.

What IS here, is that the glass is smudged with fingerprints from little people and it’s dirty from the rain hitting it on the outside. Because it is dirty it casts a slight “film” over the glass and makes it LESS clearly seen through. The world outside is perfectly clear and pristine … my perspective, because of the smudged glass, is what’s askew.

Sometimes I think that we all have a “window” we look through when we see the world. Often, our windows are smudged and dirty with different things that don’t allow us to see clearly.

Maybe we’ve experienced negative things so we see the world through a “lens” that is very heavily swayed by those things. Abuse, injustice, prejudice, pessimism, failure, etc. can and does add to the smudging of our “windows.”

Maybe what we were taught as children (through different family beliefs or different ways we saw the people around us living life) is carried over into our lives and colors how we see the world. For example, if your parents dealt with money a certain way, as a child you learned to have certain beliefs about money.

Whatever the things are that “color” or “smudge” our windows doesn’t make it wrong … but it does mean that we have to try very hard to look at what IS, without seeing the dirty glass that’s in the way. It takes even just acknowledging that these things are there and that they sway our perspective this way or that.

As I always try to remember … it’s not right or wrong. It’s not good or bed. But it does exist, and it does help when we see what IS without judgment and then try to gain greater clarity through the ownership of what exists for each of us.

I grew up with parents who divorced when I was young. That is what is. For better or worse, it is what happened, and it shaped and “smudged” in certain ways, the window I look at the world through. I can’t change it. It does no good to dwell on it. But it is helpful for me to acknowledge that going through that experience as a young girl shaped my perspective in certain ways, and some of them are not helpful to me. Seeing that and then looking BEYOND that “smudge” to a more clear perspective helps me move forward.

When I am able to own the smudges that exist on the window I look at life through, I can then WORK with them. I can see that they’re there without owning them as ME. The smudges exist because of the things I’ve experienced, but they are not me.

I am clarity. I am one with the brilliant shining sun and the window that I see through is maybe smudged and dirty, but I can understand that it’s just life that smudges the window and life doesn’t define me. I am greater and bigger than the smudges.

So today I will look BEYOND the dirty window and I will see the sun casting clarity upon the world and I will claim THAT as mine. The dirty window? Eh. I think I might grab the paper towels and cleaner and take some of the grime off. And if there are still streaks when I’m done, I will lovingly accept that they’re there but I will not make them part of me. I will not believe that they are what IS, I will understand they’re streaks on the window and nothing more. I will know that they are circumstantial, and I am beyond circumstance.

There is clarity beyond the streaks.

SO! My clarity comes when I look at life BEYOND the window, beyond the smudges, beyond the streaks, and I see what IS. Today the sun is shining. The dirty window doesn’t exist outside. So I will place my view outside and forget about the dirty window while I enjoy the warmth of the sun.

honorthismoment – #100somethings – 26/100