Usually, the term “Looking through Rose-Colored glasses” is meant as an insult, meaning that you are avoiding looking at reality.
I’m using it to say let’s see hope for the future.
“You wear your heart on your sleeve.” “You are too sensitive. “Wake up and smell the coffee.” “Famous last words.”
(Famous last words came from John Sedgwick, a Civil War general, who sarcastically said: “They couldn’t hit an elephant from this distance.”
That was right before he was shot and killed by a sniper.
“Our beliefs are like colored glasses through which we view the world.”
My grandson asked me the other day if I thought he was cynical.”
I asked him his definition of cynical. He said, “It is seeing the negative, thinking that things will not change and that there is no hope for the future.” Great definition. I should keep him in my office for reference.
"According to your definition,” I said, “No, you are not cynical. You like to find the negative, but you believe in hope for the future.”
I like his definition better than the one in the dictionary:
“a: contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives.”
… those cynical men who say that democracy cannot be honest and efficient.—
Franklin D. Roosevelt
b: based on or reflecting a belief that human conduct is motivated primarily by self-interest.”
This time of our lives has given us an excellent opportunity to look into human nature and to ask questions about why we believe, think, and behave a certain way. And how self-serving individuals like wielding power.
Why are we so polarized? Why do many see either/or black/white?
Have we always been this way?
Tricia Ross Stone, a Life Coach, wrote about Rose Colored Glasses and said that Deepak Chopra said we receive our view of the world at about 7 or 8 years old.
Would that mean that our life optometrist writes a prescription for our lenses at that age? Does he also give us colored lenses?
Yet, we also know that we add layers to our lenses throughout our lives. Those layers are placed by the energy of our thoughts, insecurities, doubts, fears, excitements, and views of the future.
So, does that explain the positive and negative, the half-full/half-empty people? Do the lenses determine conservative or liberal tendencies?
Or are those traits genetic or learned?
One side might say, “Holy cow, I could have been born to a red-necked, holy roller person who carries a shotgun or an assault weapon, who believes might makes right, and who believes in lynching or somehow annihilating the opponent.
Others: “There is no way I could have been born to a granola-eating, tree-hugging liberal who thinks that negotiating is good policy, spirituality is a form of worship, and doesn’t believe in a hell.
“People are distressed not by events, but by their opinion of events.”
--Epictetus
(Modern-day Psychological research has confirmed that our beliefs shape our emotions more than we usually think.)
For example, if we like someone, we believe the good said about them, and the bad has little or no effect.
If we don’t like the person, we enjoy the bad, and virtually no amount of good changes our view.
“You become what you put your attention to.”
–Epictetus.
Epictetus was a Greek philosopher from c50-c150 AD. He was born in slavery, had a leg broken by his master a freedman named Eaphroditus, and thus became a cripple. His master allowed him to study philosophy and later freed him.
Epictetus with a crutch:
Toward the end of the first century, when the Emperor banished philosophers from Rome, Epictetus moved to Nicopolis, founded a school of philosophy, and taught that philosophy is a way of life and not simply a theoretical discipline.
Later in life, he adopted a boy from a friend who would have died without his care, and with the help of a woman, the two raised the child.
As a Stoic philosopher, Epictetus argued that while external events are beyond our control, how we respond to them is within our control, which can be learned through discipline.
One could see that Epictetus’ life events, slavery, being crippled, and banished, would place layers on his lenses. there were events out of his control. However, HOW he responded to events was within his power.
We usually use the word stoic as a passive teeth-gritting acceptance of life.
The dictionary defines Stoicism as a noun
1. a person who can endure pain or hardship without showing feelings or complaining.
2. a member of the ancient philosophical school of Stoicism.
The ancient school of Stoicism was a Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in Ancient Greece. Ancient Rome believed that virtue was enough to achieve eudaimonia: a well-lived life. The Stoics identified the path to achieving it by practicing the four cardinal virtues in everyday life — prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice — and living according to nature.
A foal is God’s way of saying the Universe should continue.
