Of fogged up glasses
Have you noticed that when you are wearing a mask your glasses fog up? This makes selecting the right papadums at the supermarket an extremely ambitious project. I squint, wriggle my glasses, adjust the mask and try not to breathe too heavily. It’s going to take me a little while to get used to this.But this business of seeing things and yet not seeing them has always been so. We see people, but we don’t See them. We see a situation, but we have no idea of the complexities and chemistry that make it what it is. A happy school yard of raucous children appears as one thing, but we never know what is going on inside each student, their family background or the frazzled teacher in the corner who's trying to keep it all together. This murky vision also applies to the really big picture. Every so often we glimpse something that we cannot explain. Two people kiss and fall in love. The pursuant sense of vocation that will not go away, the sure and certain knowledge that we are mysteriously loved, warts and all.It's a bit like our developing perception of the people and world as we mature. Trust evaporates, budgets and tax become bull-nosed realities. People aren’t always as forgiving as Mum and Dad, or as well behaved.In time I shall not have to wear a mask, my glasses won’t fog up and I shall see clearly again. My mate Paul put it all like this. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.”