Yesterday, I finished my third semester of teaching – minus the fanfare and excitement of last year’s completion of my FIRST semester of teaching. This year, as I cleaned the whiteboards and wiped hurriedly drawn penises and ugly faces off the desks, I felt much less excited, and more so conflicted.
I know now what I didn’t know last year: breaks from teaching go even quicker than breaks from school when I was a student. It seems like a two week break flies quicker than two days of teaching.
I glued posters back to my wall, put the last grade in infinite campus, and shuffled out the door, flipping the light off with a long sigh. The Grinch graces my door right now, with the words “you’re a mean one…” crudely and purposefully printed at the bottom. His face seemed to leer towards me as a final reminder of the struggles this semester has brought my way – freshmen who are hateful (albeit, not ALL the time), a Halie who seems more anxious and more hateful, and a strong dislike of the high school age group.
As I crept down the hallway, one of the last to leave as always, I couldn’t help but ask myself “now what? Where do you go from here?”
Well, I literally got out of town, and headed south to Johnson City, Tennessee for my LASIK eye surgery. I’ve been anticipating my surgery for about 6 months, and as I sit here on the eve of the procedure, I can’t help but ruminate on the concept of sight.
Sight is defined, by the Merriam Webster dictionary, in 8 different ways. Day to day, I obviously regard “sight” most obviously, as the fourth definition: “the process, power, or function of seeing; specifically : the physical sense by which light stimuli received by the eye are interpreted by the brain and constructed into a representation of the position, shape, brightness, and usually color of objects in space.”
Sight is a cognitive function, specifically utilized to provide stimuli and mass amounts of information to our brains. On any given day, the human eyes see people, objects, lights, colors galore, words, signals, signs and more. Although my blue eyes are more sensitive to light than my brown-eyed friends, they see the same world and the same stimuli.
Or do they?
The most fascinating concept of sight (as defined above), is that doctors and scientists can’t even be sure that your “red” is my “red.” Cones and rods and pupils and corneas are similar to or different than other rods and cones, but that doesn’t really matter. The physiology behind the eyes might be the same, but what about the PERCEPTION of the stimuli?
When I was in college, I had a ‘sensation and perception’ Psychology class, where we memorized the various functions and structures in the eye, all the way back through the eye into the brain, where the information is translated and decoded and analyzed. The analysis was always the part that fascinated me.
Did you know that humans and dogs are the only two species that seek visual cues from others’ eyes? That means, as human, we look into another person’s eyes, and expect to find messages hidden there. We expect to be communicated with via sight-based stimuli. It’s incredible.
But what about the other definitions of sight? Lately, in class and outside of it, I am acutely aware of what I’m physiologically perceiving – the rolled eyes, the muffled laughs at the whispered inappropriate jokes, the looks of frustration on my students’ faces, the pile of dishes in the sink, the dead trees that surround my house, the trailer park across the street, the new ACT tracker board, and on and on and on. How am I perceiving that information, though? Based on the description above, you might gather that I’m perceiving it in a negative manner, and you wouldn’t be wrong.
We aren’t quite to the root of this word. Bear with me. The second definition of sight is also pretty important and relevant. Sight is “a thing regarded as worth seeing.” This definition gave me pause. Well…what do I think is worth seeing? Do I fall victim to selective attention like I do with my hearing?
(I’m the world’s worst at selectively attending to auditory stimuli – I grew up with two younger sisters, so I got very good at ignoring whatever I was hearing, while also having the uncanny ability of picking up on words or phrases that would suck me back into the present. My friends have commented how annoying it is that I appear to be listening, but actually am creating a to-do list in my mind, or off in la la land).
As a teacher, this ability to selectively hear, to hear what I am not even listening for, is something I’m actually proud of. When I hear a whisper across the room and can shut down an irrelevant or off-topic conversation, those who were whispering immediately stop, shooting me annoyed looks and those rolled eyes I mentioned earlier. They don’t have to tell me how impressed they are, though. I got that through their visual cues and facial expressions before they hid their awe with a more fitting, teenaged mask of angst and exasperation.
Are these the looks that are worth seeing? Those moments of “caught-off-guard,” unfiltered emotions? Seeing the moment a student goes from frustration to celebratory joy, and vice versa, are parts of my job and my life I absolutely live for (preferably the first, happier moment). Seeing raw emotion on my kids’ faces is unlike any experience.
I wonder if the second definition can be added onto the next definition. Out of eight, the third and final definition I felt empowered by in the midst of reading was the following: sight is also a “mental or spiritual perception; mental view; specifically a judgment; the act of looking at or beholding.”
Maybe it’s because it’s almost Christmas. Maybe it’s because I’m feeling sentimental on the eve of eye surgery. Maybe it’s because Jesus literally healed the blind. Or maybe it’s all of the above. Regardless, tonight, I’m absolutely enthralled by the idea of sight as a “beholding of something or someone”.
So let’s switch gears. If sight is connected to beholding, and beholding has a deeper, spiritual meaning than simply “gazing at” something, than sight is more than just advantageous human evolution.
In fact, any thoughts involving the word “behold” conjure up images of multitudes of angel voices singing, sweet baby Jesus in a manger, and twinkling Judean stars in the dead of winter.
“But the angel said to them, ‘For behold. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.'”
Behold. A word that indicated something much more than sight. In one word, the sensation, perception, and analysis of stimuli is tossed to the side and replaced instead by something so much more incredible, so much less comprehendible than the complex mechanisms of the human mind.
To look with awe, and to be unafraid when faced with a Savior. You see, I’ve always loved these verses so, so much but I’ve specifically loved how the word “behold” is sometimes removed, and the words “do not be afraid” often take it’s place. How interesting, I find myself commenting in my mind tonight, that the act of beholding involves a lack of fear, the presence of faithfulness, and seeing what might not be visible. The shepherds and wise men were certainly seeing Jesus, but they were doing more than perceiving. They were beholding.
What conclusion have I drawn from my musings, you may ask?
Well, I wish I had an answer for you.
Instead of an answer, I have hopes. First, my hope for myself is that in the midst of upcoming Christmas celebrations, I take a moment to simply behold – behold my family, behold my friends, but most importantly, behold and reflect on the Christ that was born to save us all. I hope I can live for Him, now and forever, to spread love, kindness, grace, and hope.
I hope I can go into a new semester of teaching to behold my students. I hope to see them excel…to bravely and boldly question and encourage, and to see them as they truly are, or at least on those bad days, to see them for who they can be if I don’t lower my expectations or standards. I keep going back to this “absence of fear” idea that merges with the idea of “sight,” and I hope I can walk steadily into a new year full of patience in the face of uncertainty. I want to BEHOLD more. Not just see or look or gaze.
And now, my hopes for you….
Behold a world of love amongst images and words that speak to unmitigated hatred.
Behold a world of peace amongst a backdrop of terror and strife.
Behold a world of people who are actually so alike, even amongst evidence of their individual greatnesses.
Behold a world of hope amongst a tumultuous sea of doubt, chaos, and confusion.
Behold. See. And then behold some more…never stopping to allow fear to blur the edges of your vision.
Merry Christmas. May the New Year bring each of you every beautiful and wonderful thing it can.
Halie
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