Open Your Aperture
The Turning Feral Journal - Day 52
Day 52: When we think about things that we want and pray for, it is easy to believe that those desires are being ignored when it doesn’t magically come to fruition. If it’s patience we pray for, or the desire to lose weight, to gain wealth, or to be more compassionate, those are all things that take time to develop. Because of the time and personal investment, we often write off that the big man upstairs isn’t listening to us. Yet, he so often is giving us the opportunity to develop those wants and needs we desperately pray for, we just refuse to see it.
Want to be more patient? Well, maybe God put little children in your life to help you develop that skill. Want to lose weight? Maybe the broken down car you have is actually a blessing to help get you get out and walk. Did you pray for the success of your side business? Maybe that corporate layoff you went through recently is actually the mechanism to help you achieve that. You see, it turns out that so many blessings are shrouded in difficult circumstances and we have to keep our eyes and hearts open to see them. We also have to be ready for the gifts we ask to receive to come packaged in a way that takes work and potential discomfort to fully unwrap.
How quickly and easily we recognize these masked blessings is dependent on the individual, though. My friend recently spoke to me about the idea of Emotional Relativism and I believe it relates here. The idea is that if you took two individuals, one who has experienced a traumatic event in their life and one who hasn’t, when a new traumatic event occurs to both of them the individual who has experienced trauma in the past will be less impacted and is more likely to learn from it more quickly than the individual who hasn’t experienced any past trauma. This may seem like common sense, but when applied to the idea of blessings I believe those that have prayed for guidance in the past and missed an opportunity are more primed to see new blessings for growth… so long as they learned from the historical missed opportunity and have critically reflected on why they missed it.
With the emotional maturity of middle age, I can think about times in the past where I desperately prayed or wanted for something and clearly missed the opportunity that was provided because it was masked as something else – and was likely as prickly as a cactus. But, through my own emotional relativism I am now able to better see opportunities that arise through personal desire and prayer and take action!
Daily Prompt: Have you missed opportunities in the past because of the blinders you were wearing? How can you begin to open up your aperture to make sure that the things you desire and pray for aren’t being missed in your field of view?:
Motivational Passage:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
-T.S. Eliot
Rewilding Action: Fasting. I am currently on my fourth fast of the year and this is the longest one yet. There are tons of reasons why I have done these, but at the forefront is the desire to see the forrest through the trees on my prayers and to ensure that I do not miss any opportunity – no matter how it is packaged. However, fasting is also a great exercise in crisis management and planning, too. If we think about self-sustainability and living off grid there could be times when food runs out for days, or there could be a situation where you get stuck in the backcountry and run out of supplies. As with anything, if you go into a situation without experiencing it before, it can be overwhelming… extreme hunger included. So, if you don’t want to fast for the spiritual or health benefits, consider a short fast just to train your body for what it feels like to be hungry… then if the unfortunate time ever comes where you have to skip a few meals, you will be ready for the feeling and be able to better make critical decisions in that moment!