When I was in massage therapy school, my classmates and I were asked to choose one sense we could not live without. I didn't hesitate to answer that, for me, losing my sense of sight would be devastating.

As an infant, my right eye began wandering. My parents have told me that my eye was turned toward my nose so severely that they couldn't see the iris most days. My primary care doc made an immediate referral to a pediatric ophthalmology specialist who told my worried mom and dad that "we needed to act fast" in order to preserve my sight.

At age 6 months, I had the first of 4 corrective surgeries to help fix my lazy eye. I donned glasses at age 3 and spent time each day with a patch slapped over my good eye to help strengthen the weak one. I hated those patches with a passion: they were sticky and smelled medicinal and it was freaking hard to use only my compromised eye for a few hours. Once or twice a year my mother would haul me to the eye doctor for check-ups in Albany, an hour each way. During one visit, at about age 4, I flat-out refused to look at the "E" chart during my eye exam. Back then, the eye test was the letter E pointing up, down, left, or right and I suppose that day I told the letter E to buzz off. Even today at age 50 I'm not a fan of eye charts!

This week, I invite you to see more fully. How would it feel to carve out a few minutes each day to see one aspect of the world in all its glory?

I encourage you to take a screen break for this week's exploration. Perhaps you visually explore your hands, looking at the skin, the ridges on your fingers, the lines on your palms, the tendons that jump and jive as you articulate your wrists.

Maybe on your next date with nature you look up and see the buds on trees, the blue of the sky, a red cardinal perching on a limb.

Or perhaps you go face-to-flower with a daffodil in bloom, drinking in the color of its petals.

If you live with another being, how might it feel to come eye-to-eye with them--literally--and connect your sense of sight to theirs?

The potential to miss seeing the beauty in our lives is high right now. Most of us spend too much time with our eyes glued to screens and neglect to savor the visual stimuli that is readily available to us. We're also still cloaked in the emotional heaviness of the last 12 months which can distract us from seeing what's right in our lives.

If you feel called, take ownership of your sense of sight this week. What do you see? How can you look at something with more reverence today? Share with me via email, Facebook, or Instagram.

It took me decades to fall in love with the look of my eyes. I was (and still am) self-conscious about my "adventurous" right eye, which senses strain and fatigue quickly and doesn't always track synchronously with my left. My current ophthalmologist praises the work of the surgeon who saved my sight. I give thanks every day for being able to see the immense wonder in my life!

I see you!

Jennifer