I retired from 50 years of paychecks yesterday. Here’s one of the things I learned along the way:

We are most effectively blinded by that which we see most clearly.

It’s often our unique talents and deepest strengths that limit us more than our weaknesses.

Each of us walks through life at the center of his or her own experience. (How could we be individuals and it be otherwise)? The problem is that it is easy to succumb to an illusion that I am not merely at the center of my experience, but at the center of reality. This illusion, I can assure you, has not been helpful to me…or to you, I might suppose?

An obvious and topical example is our political climate. Staunch Conservatives, who view themselves as champions of our country’s traditional values, self-reliance, free enterprise, and our Constitution’s focus on the rule of law–all good things–tend to view the Left as disloyal, relativistic, amoral, and maybe a little lazy. Meanwhile, committed Progressives consider themselves to be rational, tolerant, creative, and nurturing of the community–all good things–and see the Right as hidebound, superstitious, controlling, and mostly out for themselves.

This was a tough problem for me to discern. That made it hard to diagnose and fix. After all, I’d been walking around in the center of these capabilities and perceptions my entire life. If people out there would just wise up, be reasonable, and see things my way, everything would be fine, wouldn’t it?

The truth is, you and I are thwarted in our understanding of the sparkling, dazzling, complete and perfect diamond of reality by the tiny views of it we have through the facets of our own giftedness. We don’t see the whole, only the part, yet we think it is the whole. We mistake the facet for the diamond. When I learn that you see things differently, my first impulse is not to ask you about the view through your facet. What facet? I conclude you’re deluded and I disdain your view. Then we fight. On and on.

And our world stays blind and broken under a complete and perfect reality.

The only way out of this conundrum is awareness. (Isn’t it always)? The breakthrough arrives at the moment we pause and ask ourselves, “Could this really be true? Have I been wrong all this time and not have known it…not have SEEN it? Is reality comprised of more than just this one facet?”  

Unless and until we challenge our own perceptions, examine our own assumptions, question our own integrity, we will remain forever trapped and limited.

That’s what the leaders in our Rotary Club will be doing this year. We are challenging each other in the first half of 2021 to become better versions of ourselves as individual leaders and as an effective, high-performance team. We see diversity as a path to more complete and accurate perception. We see unity as the way to bring that more accurate perception to bear on creating positive lasting change in our towns, in our world, and in ourselves.

That’s the only way it can be done.