Thanks to Grzegorz Meleczev

We work to avoid seeing things. Sometimes a vision is unconscious. Sometimes it’s ignored.

I’m working through a book call The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. I came across words in the book that made me write those sentences.

The book is a slightly dated presentation of how various professionals spot and address problems. There is material about reflection and its role in problem solving. There’s a lot about theory, and I’ll probably shape my reading into a review to keep notes and annotations. There is a fair amount of material in the book about issues.

The book deals with work places and working environments, but it has easy applications for individuals. Whether problems in ourselves or issues in the people we love, it’s hard to see the truth. So we avoid the truth. We avoid what’s present, what’s real. And that takes work.

Reality is in front of us. It is clear, transparent, and visible. And upon seeing clear and visible reality, we cower. Certainly this isn’t automatic. There are clear realities we love. But for the real things we don’t love, we cringe from them.

We feel fear. We start the process of muddying what’s clean and transparent. Then, it becomes easier to not see. As much work as it takes from us, we’d rather create another vision, a manufactured image of ourselves or our significant others than we would notice what’s true.

It takes courage to look at reality, your own or another’s, and say “yes” to what’s there.