I-Sight

I have just emailed Issue 200 of our monthly Dream Sight News out to our subscribers, and shared the article I wrote for our first issue, back on 11.11.1998. The story is old, but still true. I guess it’s the story behind my dream sight, my in-sight.

I called the article I-Sight, and thought I’d blog it today to celebrate those 200 issues! Enjoy.

I-Sight, first pub 11.11.1998

I was intrigued by the team of white-coated people who arrived at our Infant School one week, calling on each class in turn to line up outside the Head’s Office and read letters from a chart propped against the wall. Special children came away with envelopes addressed to their parents. I was five years old, and I hoped I would be special enough to take home one of the envelopes. As the days passed I heard that the visitors had come to test our eyesight and that the letters were for those singled out to wear glasses. My wish escalated: Oh, wouldn’t I be really special if Mum and Dad had to take me to choose glasses! I guess I must have wished pretty hard for a five year old, because by the time I got to the front of the line I couldn’t see the big letter at the top of the chart and I’ve worn glasses or contact lenses ever since.

It was a revelation to me a few weeks after taking home the precious envelope to discover that houses were made of bricks all the way up to their roofs, rather than being brick near the ground and then a kind of reddish smudge the rest of the way up. Trees grew leaves to replace the green clouds that had floated around them, and the night sky was neatly scattered with precise pin-point designs instead of huge, glaring, intermingling white blurs.

I wonder if it was then that my dreams opened stunning new vistas – worlds beyond worlds and worlds within worlds? My previous childhood dreams of being threatened by wolves or finding myself waist deep in snake pits gave way to a recurring dream of mirrored lakes which, if I laid on the ground and looked sideways in a special way, revealed their hidden depths teeming with tropical fish. In those dreams I used to plead with everyone to look at the water in my special way, to take my sideways look at the magnificence that thrived below the surface of an English lake where the presence of tropical fish, to the uninitiated, was merely a ridiculous fantasy. No-one ever looked.

Now I can see, with or without the aid of my glasses, that in the same moment that I was a child needing to feel special and loved for who I was beyond the surface, I needed to learn that the world did indeed have depth of meaning. My short sight became a blessing enabling me to experience a different view, to see different perspectives and to have faith that what may seem confusing one day can leap into clear focus the next. Through short sight I learned INsight – I learned to see within.

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