Clarity

Moments of blinding clarity find us at the strangest times.

They find us as we sit in a meeting.  They find us at the nameless hours when the dog wants to go out for the third time that night.  They find us as we shower and commute and occasionally, very occasionally, when we actually spend time thinking.

But are we ready for those moments of clarity?  Have we trained ourselves to think wisely and well about them?  Or are we so used to being unclear about things that when clarity appears we shrug it off with a sense of shock?

Do we even value moments of clarity?  Are we ready for the bursting of bubbles, the piercing and deflation of our fantasies, the ripping away of masks and scenes?  Clarity is seldom as pleasant as we believe it would be.

Why?  Because clarity can show us things as they really are and as they really progress.  Clarity reveals the flaws we unconsciously hide, the personality quirks we've learned to accept as normal, the situations that are much different than the glasses we wear on every day.  Clarity gives the view of the life we are actually in, not the life we think we're in.

Does that make clarity unvaluable?  I am tempted to answer no, but my fingers hesitated in the response.

Clarity unasked or unlooked for provokes one of two reactions:  there is the seemingly less common reaction of "Oh, so that's how it is" followed by a vague sense of relief.  Then there's the more common reaction: the realization of how things sit and the almost immediate rarrival of grief or anger or resentment or just plain depression - all stemming from the fact that the clarity brings with it the very real understanding of what is.

Is clarity necessary?  Well, to be better, of course.  Without it we will tend to drift through our lives either spending our time doing things that are really leading nowhere or operating on a series of assumptions that simply are not true.  To see clearly is to be able to chart a course free of the illusions and hauntings that many guide their lives by.

But we have accept that clarity, seek it out, be ready to grab it at any moment which it arrives. 

And not just when we're thinking actively about it.  Even when we're just standing in the shower.