The Two Sides of Vision

Reflecting on your comments for my last post about Jack Kevorkian, I found very interesting the suggestion that his breaking prison rules (smuggling the peanut butter sandwich back to his cell to consume later) was somehow exemplary of the man's flawed character, as perhaps it was. On the other hand having looked into the eyes of this diminutive, frail man, I saw a man whose physical and perhaps emotional health prevented him from eating enough in any one sitting to sustain what health he had. I've known many people like that. Unlike you and I, prisoners don't have access to refrigerators to raid when they are hungry.

It probably won't matter much how you look at this man, what he did and the chow hall episode I shared with you. But it does illuminate an important truth. There are always two(or more)sides to vision.

I was moved by the Hallmark presentation of Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet In Heaven and recently picked up the audio CD to give it a relisten during my daily commute to and from work. What strikes me so far (Eddie has met the first two of the five persons, the blue man and his captain) is this theme of the two sides of vision. His encounters in heaven opened his eyes to another side of vision that he was incapable, or perhaps unwilling, to recognize in his life. What was for Eddie an instance of a boy innocently running into the road chasing his ball was also an instance causing an accident that took the life of the blue man. What was for Eddie a physical handicap that cheated him out of the life he dreamed of was also a sacrifice that actually allowed him to have life rather than be burned alive when he and his comrades in arms destroyed the camp where they had been held and brutally treated as prisoners of war.

Two sides of vision. Blue states and red states. Conservative and liberal. Judgmental and compassionate. Sad that we are content waiting for heaven to open our eyes to the other side of what we choose to see in life.

Copyright 2006 Don Neale, Jr.
All rights reserved.