The Lights May Appear To Be On, But That Doesn't Mean They Always Are

​I was in my little writing nook writing yesterday morning. I happened to look out the window and down at the parking lot and panicked when I saw my car lights were on.

I put on some shoes and rushed down the steps and out to my car, nearly tripping over myself as I did. As I gathered myself and approached the car, though, it became clear my lights weren't on at all. It was simply the way the sun was beating against the glass on the car lights that made them LOOK like they were on.

I was standing there lost in this case of mistaken identity when I heard a voice, Keith!

No, this can't be, as I am standing there in 40 degree temperatures in nothing but my pajama bottoms and a t-shirt and untied shoes, the only neighbor I know in the whole complex is out walking her dog?

(Both of which were quite bundled up, by the way.)

She didn't ask it, but her face did quite well enough. What are you doing out here, Keith - looking like THAT?

So I told her. I told her about the sun's magic trick. When I did, she didn't look at me like I was crazy. I found this to be quite accepting of her.

Maybe even forgiving.

When I got back up to my nook, I looked down again upon my car. The lights still looked on. High beams. But then I shifted positions and tried looking out from a different angle.

Poof, the lights went dim.

Our senses have a responsibility of looking out for us. They detect dangers and urgencies in our life allowing us to respond accordingly and move to less dangerous spaces. Since many of us have had to deal with dead batteries after leaving our car lights on all night, it's not hard to understand why my eyes perceived and felt what they saw as an urgency.

But here comes the tricky part - our senses are not always right. They sometimes alert us to urgencies that aren't urgencies at all. Had I taken just a moment, allowed myself the slightest shift in how I was looking at things, I would have picked up on that.

We are always capable of spotting the tricks.

It's hard, though, because we live in a world that can keep our senses quite active. We have no lack of things these days to see and hear and feel and touch and smell. And in this world, it's easy to become a slave to trying to respond to the instincts all of those senses are tapping into.

It feels urgent, so surely it must be.

No. No it is not always urgent. The lights are not always on just because they appear to be.

Sometimes it's helpful to slow down, shift positions, look at life a little differently, protect ourselves from falling into the trap of believing everything demanding our response is worthy of our response, and maybe even more, protect ourselves from missing out on the things that truly are worthy while we are falling into that trap.

Some of our greatest changes in life don't happen through big overhauls, they often come through the smallest of shifts, the shortest of stops.

Just short enough to discover the lights are not really on.