Reorienting Our Thoughts: The Beauty of Dusk
Listening to Frank Bruni on a recent Oprah Insiders live event inspired me in ways I couldn’t imagine. It is a true gift to listen, learn, and be inspired unexpectedly sometimes by others.
Frank lost some of his eyesight to a stroke and shared the positive lessons he learned by having this condition and in the process avoided self-pity. Most everyone he knew had gone through some type of personal struggle and it occurred to him that if people all walked around with a sandwich board listing the trails in their life, none of us would be prey to self-pity because struggle is truly part of a human life and we’d become more empathic towards others when we realize this.
As you know, I don’t have to walk around with a sandwich board because people can see my main struggle in life when they see the sun shine off my bald head. It’s taken 3 years of coming to grips with the fact my hair may never grow back, answering questions about having cancer from strangers, and looking in the mirror to find a new kind of beauty in my image. But as Frank points out, the real question in any struggle is not to ask “Why me?” but rather, “Why, not me?”
His point went on to reflect the fact people go through their life in the world thinking we should just be comfortable all the time and in doing so we become less prepared for unplanned occurrences. But if we start realizing when we are in the most difficult moments of our lives, it is normal, then our mindset can start shifting towards solutions and healing.
Bruni said, “Why me, is a wasted moment,” instead he suggests we look at our strengths to help us get through any ordeal. Through sports, my faith, and a large community of female entrepreneurs who have supported me through my revelation of my alopecia condition, helped me accept and turn my life into more than a condition. Stepping through the hard moments and walking into bravery is the only way I have moved forward. My word of the year “undaunted” helps me take big and small steps every day.
I hope this blog post sheds light for you on difficult moments and conditions you are experiencing and inspires you to walk through a vail of darkness following light rays instead. Bruni’s memoir The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found comes out on March 1st through Amazon.
“There are devastations that break a heart open and there can be beauty in the rupture and the shards,” said Bruni. There is truth to that beautiful, raw statement. Sometimes we have to accept the rupture, see the shards, pick them up, and carry on.
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