WE SEE WHAT WE WANT TO SEE

My wife, I love her and she loves me. And because she loves me, she is often the first – and sometimes the only – person who reminds me that I am often a less-than-observant person. I am getting better. The other day on our daily walk I did notice before she did that a neighbor had put up a fence. And I am much more quick to notice when she has moved some furniture around, but not always.

     The truth is that I see what I want to see, what is important for me to see, important in my eyes. Granted, the neighbor’s new fence is not all that important and where the sofa now is is; but neither is that vital in the grand scheme of things. And that is where my lack of perception truly comes in for honest criticism. The only consolation is that I am not alone in this ability to block out what I would prefer not to see and see only that which I want to see.

     In the parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus, the rich man is rightly condemned because of his total disregard for poor Lazarus’s well-being, Lazarus who begged at the rich man’s doorstep and would have been glad to have the crumbs that fell from his table. The rich man saw Lazarus begging, yet he did not truly see him. What he seemed to see, as far as the parable is concerned, was that this beggar was not his concern. He saw what he wanted to see.

     And so do we. We can so easily become wrapped up in our own wants and needs that we do not see the wants and needs of others, including those we love the most, our spouse and our children. We become consumed by the job, by success, by needing our ego gratified, that we do not see what effect that self-serving lifestyle is having on our loved ones. We even convince ourselves that we are doing it for them.

     This myopic vision of the truth, of reality, can easily extend beyond our family. Like the rich man in the parable, we may live a life of oblivious disregard of those all around us who are suffering and in need. Like the rich man, when confronted with the truth, we protest that we never ever saw what was going on. And that would also be the truth because we truly did not see it because we did not want to see it. We saw what we wanted to see.

     So many of the overwhelming problems in our world today have become such because those with eyes to see simply did not see them when they were beginning because they did not want to see them. They continue to be overwhelming because too many of us still do not see them for what they are or because we don’t want to see them at all. And so we simply look the other way.

     The rich man was condemned not because he chose to look the other way and do nothing when he could have done something that would have cost him little or nothing. Rather, he was condemned because he looked into the eyes of a beggar and saw no one. There are people who are suffering and they are all around us. They even may be those closest to us. We need to see them. They need us to see them.                  WJP