Sometimes closing a door is more like eating a carrot

Carrots are a good source of our everyday living - an apple a day keeps the doctor away... well, what you might not know is that carrots are good for not just our bodies but our eyes.  I was told to eat lots of carrots when I was a kid so I could see better... I had just gotten glasses and hated them. 

Here's a quick definition: 

The human body converts beta-carotene into vitamin A (retinol) - beta-carotene is a precursor of vitamin A. We need vitamin A for healthy skin and mucous membranes, our immune system, and good eye health and vision.

So over the past week, I have had some good visions. 

One was on last Tuesday in Nashville when I eyed something, didn't buy it and walked away. It felt good not to cave into an impulse buy. That buy would've been hard to pack, cumbersome and bothersome. I thought about it, but nah, I walked away. 

I had been dealing with a betrayal, a letdown, and yet freedom at the same time with this door and I couldn't let go of the doorknob. I had to keep playing with it for years! I needed to let that other side know that I wasn't affected by it slides notes under the threshold and the knocking that felt like taunting. After a few rounds about the room, I finally did something about it. I looked the door one more time and then the knob - didn't get scared or happy or mean then walked away. 

See, I was clinging to something that was never there: which was a loyal friend. As we've all been finding out as we get older, it's best to have a handful of friends rather than a boat full of them. When we were younger, we all wanted to be popular, well liked and chosen first on a team for dodgeball. Now we want to have a few folks we can count on. 

For what I do for a living, I need to have a lot happen, to get the project off the ground... but not so in my mind, I like quality over quantity... so I pick and chose what I think is best. Come up with the best vision for it, execute it and hopefully watch it blossom. So, as I watch some of my favorite people, flower, get a "nod" from peers and colleagues, I also see sadness - in eyes that are craving for it. There is hunger in their eyes - you will see it in my photos from time to time... hence why I focus on it. When you are in row double R you can't see what the artist is doing... you just hear it. Therefore having a good time listening to it vs. having a good time seeing it... sometimes you will never see it but you will hear it, and that's just about as good as seeing it. 

I had also had a dear friend call me out over not calling her back. I thought how petty that is? And it was, and I remember when I called her out about something that resulted in her pettiness, she saw how she was being. She had eaten her carrots too. We don't have to be mean or cruel; we just have to behave. We make mistakes for sure... all day long. 

But when you commit a crime, as hard as heartbreak or betrayal, we tend to put those people in a section of hell, and oddly enough, we are sitting right next to them. We are told "take the high road," most of the time we do, but this time I had to light it to see my way out of hell. It was consuming me, dragging me down and crippling me. So fighting fire with fire is ok, as long as you are use it safely. 

"Cause only you can cause forest fires," said the bear. 

Eyes are the windows of our souls, yes and it's true... we can deliver any eye we want, kind, sad, wide, cross, wandering, and of course my favorite #sideeye. 

Sometimes when we close the door on a person, an issue or part of life that is hazardous to our health another one opens or becomes ajar and then you make like Bugs Bunny and eat a carrot and ask, "What's up doc?"