you see what you look at

[Apologies to my late grandma for the blog title; she heartily disliked any sentence that ended with a preposition!]

 

When my best friend turned 16, he acquired (for $1,000!) a 14-year-old BMW. Given its age and mileage, he perpetually performed maintenance on that car -- for him, it was a labor of love. It looked sleek.

I, on the other hand, knew nothing about BMW's. If asked, I wouldn't have been able to identify them from any other brand of car.

But here's what began to happen:

 

Once I began to ride with him in this car, and listened to him talk so much about his car, I started noticing other BMW's everywhere on the road.

 

The distinctive headlights-

That logo-

I had no idea how many people drove this kind of car, until I knew what I was looking at [apologies again to grandma - another preposition!]. 

 

Once I could identify them, I could see them.

 

Isn't that how it normally goes for you and for me? What we look at, we tend to see. But until we know what we're looking at, we don't see it.

 

Some examples: 

-A friend will play you a song they love, and will point out a note sung (or instrument used) at a particular moment in the song. They'll tell you why they specifically love that part. You never noticed it before. But after it's pointed out to you, you can't not hear it.

-You love a particular snack. But until you told your friends about this, they'd never heard of nor seen it sold anywhere -- but since you told them, they see it all the time. They even will send you a message when they find it somewhere. "This makes me think of you"

 

So: 

 

If you're anxious, discouraged, disheartened, cynical -- I'm not going to say there's no legit reason for this. The world puts us all on blast every moment telling us what sucks and what's getting worse.

 

But I will ask: if you want more hope, more encouragement, less anxiety, less cynicism ... what are you purposefully looking at that'll point out to you those sources of hope? What are you looking at that'll show you why there's reason to feel encouraged? Where are you looking to that's committed to lessening your anxiety or cynicism? 

 

Who in your life reminds you of these things? Who in your news feed shows this to you? 

 

It's naively idealistic to think we can thrive without intentionally looking for what's hopeful, encouraging, authentic, true, or noble. If your social media feed is 15% encouragement and 85% doom and gloom, it's reasonable to presume your mood and mindset would correlate to this.

  

Perhaps this is why the apostle Paul writes (while he's in prison!) in Philippians 4 to his hearers about this:

 

Truth is, our minds will fill with something. Ergo, we gotta watch what we think about and put into our minds (just like we gotta watch what we eat and drink to maintain our health). 

 

We see what we look at. What are you looking at?