Look Into My Eyes

"Look into my eyes and tell me what it is you see in me.
Would you look into my eyes?
Look into my eyes and tell me what it is you see in me.
Could you tell me what you see?"

As I sit to write this entry tonight I have these words repeating over and over in my head...if for some reason you don't know the phrase (I'll withhold judgment) they come from the song by the same name as my post title, "Look Into My Eyes" by the group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.  Now you can pass judgment on me for using a 14 year old rap song to start out a post on a blog about learning.  Oh' NBC, "The More You Know"...

Why exactly do I have these lyrics running through my head at 12:30 am during the busiest week of my year?  Good question!  One I should be pondering and probably the ultimate reason I am even writing this blog.   

Here's the back story, busiest week of the year...extended filing time for Year End Pension Plans (Give or take about 85% of the company I work for, their business), October 15th.  That means in my world, you have to have all your "stuff" done and the right people sign off on it by Monday or the D.O.L. (Department of Labor) and I.R.S. start fining your clients $25 a day...we get till the 17th this year because the 15th is Saturday, thanks.  For those of you not in the T.P.A. world, which would be 99.9% of you probably reading this blog (I do keep making up these percentages out of thin air), don't worry about it, I don't really get what I just wrote either, but it is the equivalent of making sure your taxes are postmarked by April the 15th.  Very important to the people who cut my check.


So that being said I probably should be getting some much needed rest right now, instead of rethinking the chorus of a rap song that is 14 years old and writing words in a post that isn't really important...and yet I am still typing.  So I'll give you something.  As I opened my laptop with the intention of typing out a blog, but no general direction of where I was going, I had to look at the picture on my homepage and wait for Firefox to load.  The picture is one of me, my two brothers and my father at a Vanderbilt/Florida football game from a few years ago.  As I stared at that picture, the same one I have looked at probably a thousand times (why stop making up numbers now) I looked into my own eyes.  ****!   You can use any four letter word you want there. 

Have you ever looked into your own eyes from a picture?  Thought about what it was they were telling you?  People always say you can read a lot about a person from looking into their eyes, well I looked into my own in that picture and saw the face of a man who looked familiar, but was someone else at the time.  I told two stories with those eyes.  Narrow.  That's how my eyes normally are when I smile, but I noticed in this smile I'm cutting my eyes to the left.  Narrow and cut to the left.  Grin.  I don't really have a smile across my face, more like a sideways grin, the same one that I have given millions (we're just making numbers up here, right) of times to people.  Open.  My body position in the picture, non-committal, to anything.  Funny how I have looked at that picture every time I opened my computer for the past several years now and thought, "I like the picture of my family", never once have I looked into my eyes and told myself what it was that I saw. 

I can remember the night well.  A chance to spend time with my family, and see my beloved Gators play.  My ex-wife and I had driven from Dallas to Nashville just for the game.  Tim Tebow was at quarterback and we were watching history being made (they would win the National Championship later that year).  We even all stood up and sang "We are the Boys" at the end of the third quarter like a home game at The Swamp.  What more could a person ask for (if you are a gator fan, I get it)? 

Funny the other part of the story I remember.  I had just recently started battling panic attacks a few months earlier.  I had already had to check myself into the emergency room once.  I struggled with fear everywhere I went.  Not afraid of getting shot or dying in a Tornado type fear.  We are talking the kind that makes a normal guy (I thought of myself as normal, ha) not be able to ride in the car up 5 flights of a parking garage because I might get claustrophobic and can't breath.  The same kind that made my ex and I have to drive instead of fly because I couldn't get on a plane, and finally the kind that when we got to the hotel and I realized our room was on the top of the 13th or 14th floor, (one of those teen numbers) I almost passed out in the elevator because my legs got so weak.  I literally had to face the doors of the elevator and focus on breathing so as to not look out the glass windows on the way up and down.  These were the eyes that were there that night, these were the eyes in that picture. 

It's funny tonight I looked into my eyes for the first time and I remembered that night, that time in my life.  Maybe it is because I am so busy this week or maybe it was because I took a bike ride after work, who knows the trigger, but for the first time I saw what was truly evident.  I reflected on that period and that time that seemed so uncertain and scary.  In many ways it seems like yesterday and in others it seems like an eternity.  I still haven't been able to fly, but I can get on an elevator (for the most part) and ride up.  I've changed jobs, moved, been through a divorce and seen a lot of things come and go in my personal life.  I think it is interesting how we as humans may never truly know what we are really seeing when we look into someone's eyes.  We may not know what that person is going through or battling, even if they are smiling, but here's my bullet point and I'll wrap this novel up.  Before you look into another's eyes and tell them what you see, make sure you can look into your own and give a truthful examination of what is staring back.  Then look into their's and listen with your heart.  You can read a lot about a person by looking into their eyes, but never think you get the full story.  The moment you do, you have been deceived.

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