Your eyesight might not be so very bad, but, even so, being fitted with the right pair of glasses can be a revelation. You may discover that you haven’t been seeing things so clearly as you thought you were.
The same thing happens with more knowledge about different things or more detailed knowledge about the same thing—that is, being surprised by the value or importance or the lack thereof of someone or something you thought you knew well.
But seeing better and knowing better are still not quite the same as understanding better. You can see something more clearly and know something in more detail without necessarily understanding better.
Christopher Columbus suspected that the world was round, not flat. That why he was convinced that he could find a better way to India and the East Indies than the long route south to the remotest tip of the African continent, around it, and sailing still further East.
He felt vindicated once he saw the islands (of the Caribbean) and their native people who he was mistakenly sure were Indians!
Columbus’s contributions were still great: he saw and knew important things even if he misunderstood some of them.
That may be a pretty good description of most of us. We may see things and people, get to know them, and still profoundly misunderstand them.
That’s why life is a never-ending process involving seeing, knowing, and understanding—which involves a never-ending process of change and development.
It’s okay if you don’t mind not seeing so clearly—or not knowing that much about other things or people—or not understanding the what or why or how of so many things.
But, you may be getting somethings wrong. Like Columbus, you may encounter something new and mistake it for what it is.
Living things are changing things. Living people are changing people. You’re always going to be challenged to see more clearly, to know more and better, and to understand things and people more deeply.
Insights change and develop. Knowledge expands and deepens. Understanding grows and develops—and so do you and everyone else still alive and kicking!
This includes beliefs, religion, God, right, wrong, good, and bad. Our customs, faith, and understandings constantly change and develop.
Like Columbus, we may celebrate that some of our ideas were fundamentally right, even though we still may mistake a lot of the details about where we are and who really are the people we’re encountering.
We may venerate the Bible and still at the same time no longer believe some of things people believed many centuries ago. Hopefully, that’s progress and development—even though sometimes we get it wrong, not right!
What do we really understand about God? Who really is Jesus? Does everything his followers say, teach, and do really reflect his teachings? Do we always, frequently, sometimes, or rarely get it right when we encounter a new place, new people, new ideas, or new directions?
Our change and development in all things is never-ending. New people, new things, new insights are our daily diet.
Are you tired of it all, do you wish it would stop, do you want everything to be just like you remember it? If you do, beware! You may be yearning for life’s end.
Life involves change and development. If you stop changing and developing, it’s over!
10 April 2022