How Does Stress Rob You of Imaginative Vision?
Imagining Your Peaceful Life
The only thing worse than being blind
is having sight but no vision.
Stress and Vision
Stress robs you of vision. Vision is not equivalent to sight. Sight refers to the function of your eyes. Vision refers to your capacity to imagine what you can't see. These distinctions mean that you can have perfect eyesight and lack vision, or you can be blind and have transformative vision. This distinction is why Helen Keller, who was both blind and deaf, couldn't see but had vision beyond the present, and why others with 20/20 eyesight can't imagine beyond their current circumstances.
Imagine means seeing an image in your mind. Visionaries imagine possibilities beyond anything that exists. Visionaries have ranged from mystics to inventors, dreamers to doers. Martin Luther King was one of the great visionaries of his era—of any era. He envisioned a world beyond racial division.
What's your vision of your future? Can you see it? Does it feel possible or just a pipe dream? Do you imagine yourself accomplishing what you see? Or are you just wishing and hoping your life will be better?
Stress constricts your vision. When you feel stressed-out, you feel squeezed into a tight space with no way out. Your life becomes a close-up in a picture where most of the image has been cropped to magnify one small section of the whole picture. All you can see is a small fragment of the whole. Stress tells you that this fragment is the whole. This is the way it is. The way it will always be. You're helpless with no hope for a better future. If you can see only what's current in your life, how can you envision a peaceful future?