As shopworn as they may have become over the years, some truisms continue to earn their keep. Time and tide still wait for no man. Doubt is still the beginning of wisdom. And he who hesitates remains lost. As difficult as it can sometimes be to find commonality with others, these pithy little adages form a crossroads--a meeting ground--where divergent beliefs and backgrounds can discover a momentary convergence.
Certainly we can all agree that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, for doesn't each one of us gaze upon our family with the rosiest of tints? Through this lens of love, our children are more deserving and our grandchildren more charming. Could any brother be funnier than ours? Any sister more capable, more thoughtful? Indeed, this is the very thing we count on from our kin; it's what counters the stresses of proximity and subdues the awkwardness of familial demands. It's what unpacks the baggage of past hurts, calms old rivalries.
It is the reason, Dorothy, that there is no place like home. You bask in your family's warm glow, as surely as they do in yours.
The mind has an endless capacity for magic and illusion: The Great Cerebrum, Conjurer Extraordinaire. Rabbits out of a top hat? Pah! Kids' stuff! Disappearing doves? Bush league! Facile hocus-pocus! Our minds can retrieve smells, rescue sounds, and salvage emotions with seamless skill. Distance is conflated--time, as well as space. Like a waking dream, our memories can enlarge rooms, diminish faults, sharpen action and mute dialogue at will. An opaque veil drapes gracefully over problems, erasing them as surely as Botox on a wrinkle. Quantum theory posits ten dimensions: incomprehensible to some, maybe, but the mind already has no issue with being in multiple states and places simultaneously, thank you very much!
So we have the capacity, but we must learn to control the act. Why wear those special rosy glasses only while at home? After all, you look so good in them! Warp the space between yourself and others to be understanding, be loving. And o it as much for yourself as for them. Your thoughts make their own lasting impression on your physiology. What is belief but practiced thought?
When asked how the ordinary Archibald Leach became the inimitable Cary Grant, Cary said he simply imitated who he would like to be, until one day he woke up and that was exactly who he was.
Create a revolution in yourself. Become the you you want to be.
