Cleaning Our Glasses
My wife Katie is always disgusted when she takes a close look at my glasses. “They’re so filthy!” she complains. Katie is the sort of person who keeps a microfiber cloth handy so she can spot-clean her glasses frequently. I am not that sort of person.
Katie ends up with much cleaner glasses than mine. My vision is constantly obscured by small specks of grit and dust, but my glasses are so close to my eyes I don’t notice. It’s not until I take them off and look at them that I realize Katie is right; they’re filthy.
At work, I often have dirty glasses, too. I think I’m seeing things the way they are, but really there’s grit and dust in the way that distorts my view. My perception of my coworkers, my own work performance, and the work itself is flawed.
What could it look like to take my dirty glasses off and see what’s getting in the way of a clear view?