RE-VISION

I always do a fair amount of revising with my writing, and it came to me this morning that revision should also be a steady pursuit in other parts of my life. The word derives from the Latin for “to see again”, and surely that is something I need to do – to see, to actually look at, the customary wonders of this world again and again, with ever fresher and more heedful eyes. We get the words “visor” and “vision” from the same Latin root, and I guess I need to put on my inner “visor” so I can have a better vision of the everyday miracles in my life, the routine wonders that usually slip past my notice. As I’m typing, for instance, there are tremulous little shadows on my wall from the sunshine outside, and there are lovely light-filled reflections on the glass in a picture frame on the same wall – the kind of everyday spectacles I almost never notice. This morning, lucky for me, I paused in my writing and used what I might call my re-vision to see these simple but delightful displays with re-vised eyesight.