The Legend of the One-Eyed Boy: How I Learned to Build on My Weaknesses as Much as on My Strengths
Recently, I had the chance to visit my first school, over 40 years since the last time I stepped foot in the building, and it was a pretty bizarre experience, but I walked away with a memory that taught me a crucial lesson.
Built over 100 years ago, the building had been condemned as a fire hazard (asbestos was likely a factor too) and forced the students to move to a variety of newer schools in the area, and only a handful of the kids went to the same one I did. We moved away from the town a few years later, and as the years have gone by, visits to the town became more seldom, especially after my grandparents all passed away. I had recently learned that the building was still being used as a community center, and I was intrigued to see if it would refresh some fuzzy memories of the two years I spent there. We stopped by on a whim on the way to the mountains, after telling my daughter the story, and I was surprised to find it open on a Saturday, and jumped at the chance to take a peek. As I walked along the creaky floors of this building that I’m pretty sure was almost entirely not haunted, looking for clues to rebuild my fading mental images, what I found in the knick-knack shop, model train club, and upstart church that now resided in this oddball little building weren’t quite as disorienting as the fortune teller, veiled by a beaded curtain and the cloud of green mist and incense pouring out of what I’m pretty sure was my first grade classroom. We didn’t venture inside to find out. But even more disorienting was the realization that this visit did little to add any definition to my memories. Though there were a few familiar elements, if anything the experience only muddled the brief flashes of memory that remained. Among them, though, one particular recollection stands out of a shy little boy, with a bandage patching one eye hidden behind a thick pair of glasses, waiting in line for the water fountain in the hallway, with another group of students passing by, staring, with one asking with astonishment if the boy only had one eye. You probably guessed it by now, but, yes, that one-eyed boy was me. But what that little boy learned in that experience helps me see more clearly now, in ways you probably wouldn’t imagine.
“Though I can’t help but wonder what I missed by not growing up in one town, I’m absolutely certain I’m stronger as a result of moving between a variety of environments that forced me out of my comfort zone.…”
Early memories are weird, and hard to describe. Some people characterize theirs as “dim” but mine are vivid, if fleeting, and I have trouble putting the earliest ones in the right order. We lived on the outskirts of a medium-sized town in East Tennessee, in a wooded area, with lots of space to run around. Something about this place is just in my blood, and after moving away when I was eleven, I’ve found that I have a sense of nostalgia that can never be satisfied, like an unquenchable thirst, but I value the memories I made there, and the family members who still live in the area. And though I can’t help but wonder what I missed by not growing up in one town, I’m absolutely certain I’m stronger as a result of moving between a variety of environments that forced me out of my comfort zone. But as I look back on the journey, it’s the big changes that are often the landmarks on the road (as someone who processes everything visually, this is barely even a metaphor).
Our house was a short walk from the home of my grandparents, but the route was mostly obscured by a giant “crater” that I was never entirely convinced they didn’t find me in as infant, in a crashed alien spacecraft, and discovered I could lift the car with one hand. But, other than my tendency to seek out my own “fortress of solitude”, the fact that as a child I pretty much had the opposite of super powers helped convince me that this was pretty unlikely.
“…when my mom told me I could ‘be anything I wanted’ when I grew up I honestly believed I could be a giraffe…”
Ok, sure, “the opposite of superpowers” might be a bit of an exaggeration, but that’s how I felt — small, and weak, in the face of the world, but, I suppose I had a healthy sense of adventure, at least. And of course it’s important to point out that in reality I was privileged to be generally able-bodied, but beyond that I lacked the physical strength of some, was uncoordinated, shy, anxious, fearful, and mostly non-verbal until much later than generally expected. When I did start speaking, for some reason it was in complete sentences, and sometimes I even corrected the grammar of older relatives, which, you can imagine, didn’t always go over very well. I benefitted greatly from patient, loving, actively involved parents who encouraged and supported me, and along with the essential Biblical virtues, grew in me the idea that different perspectives can be of value, and were more valuable than conformity, and that, of course, kindness must be a constant. I had an active imagination, and had big questions that I often didn’t express, and assumed that when my mom told me I could “be anything I wanted” when I grew up I honestly believed I could be a giraffe. I though the world was in black and white when my parents were kids, and though I was afraid I was going to run out of blood from all the blood tests and surgeries, I actually believed for several years that I once knew how to fly but had forgotten how. The sense of wonder I had in childhood is one that I value to this day, and try to recapture in whatever small way is possible, and it’s something I try to encourage and foster in my daughter as well.
“I actually believed for several years that I once knew how to fly but had forgotten how…”
That “crater”, I eventually learned, was where material had been excavated for construction of the 4-lane highway that ran by our house. Though the exact order is hard to discern, the first memory I can identify is of the day when that construction blocked our driveway and we had to drive across the field to get to our house. The change, I suppose, initiated a lasting memory, but oddly enough I have no recollection of what that area looked like before the highway was completed.
Like so many other things I experienced in those early days, the highway was a key part of the framework through which I grew to understand the world. For example, my internal measure of a mile is forever tied to visualizing the distance from the end of our driveway to the Texaco station just down the hill from our church. I don’t recall ever walking there — it was usually a short drive, occasionally in the back of Pappaw’s pickup truck to get one of those foil-wrapped chili dogs from the gas station, which still stand out in my mind as one of the greatest treats ever.
Among the powers I lacked was super-vision (though I had plenty of supervision)… if the images in my memory are a little fuzzy, that could also be because my vision itself was. When I was 3, after being concerned that I didn’t show any interest in books or even TV, my parents discovered that I was legally blind in my left eye. This took a little while to identify, with my delayed verbal communication and a socially withdrawn nature, but my Mom in particular decided to seek out some answers. In retrospect, it’s a little frightening that I would fly down the hill dodging trees on my Big Wheel, despite being legally blind in one eye.
“As cool as it was to pretend to be a pirate for a little while, this was not easy…”
Along with (very tiny) glasses, the ophthalmologist recommended that we start applying a patch to one eye. That is, covering the good eye, in order to strengthen the impaired one. As cool as it was to pretend to be a pirate for a little while, this was not easy, but I trusted my parents, who trusted the doctor, though I’m sure there was hesitation all around, including among some family members who didn’t see the potential, and thought it just made things more difficult for me. They weren’t wrong about that part, but fortunately, this was discovered early enough developmentally for strengthening the weak eye to be a possibility. However, after a few years of patching the eye for a good part of the day, it wasn’t strengthening well enough to have sufficiently sustained improvement. At one point, there were concerns from the doctor that I might have a more serious problem (a brain tumor was one possibility among their concerns), and on his recommendation we took a trip to Atlanta to see a specialist. Having eliminated the worst-case scenarios, the advice was simply that I needed to wear the patch all the time, and so through first grade and into part of second grade, I did.
The patch, as I recall, was basically a bandage that covered my eye with tape around the edges, covering my entire eye socket. Though for a while we patched over the lens on my glasses, apparently I kept cheating and looking around it, so they patched directly on my eye. I believe the patch itself was about the color of my skin (a color we regrettably referred to on crayons as “flesh” in those days) so behind my glasses, it really must have looked, at least from a distance, like I had one eye. Even if it didn’t, it would have been an odd site that surely brought up curiosity. I certainly would have wondered what the story was, had I seen something similar, though I likely would have lacked the boldness to pose the question, especially at that age.
“To say that I’m grateful for this result would be an understatement…”
Eventually, the eye strengthened enough to stop wearing the patch. In fact, I even stopped wearing glasses entirely by third grade, as my formerly legally-blind eye had improved all the way from 20/200 to 20/30, and I not only became interested in reading (thanks, in no small part, to The Electric Company), but actually was reading at a higher level than my classmates by the time I got to Kindergarten. To say that I’m grateful for this result would be an understatement… I use my vision like anyone else, but as my education proceeded, I began to take an interest in art, and eventually graphic design, and ultimately when I went to college, that was my area of study, and now have a moderately successful career in which I help brands and organizations by equipping them with tools for visual communication. None of that would have been likely to be possible had this intervention not happened.
Sure, my “bad” eye has gradually weakened slightly over the years, and drifts a little when I’m tired, and my depth perception has never been great (just ask my high school gym class about who they picked last for softball). 3-D movies kind of just look like 2-and-a-half-D, but otherwise my weak eye supports the stronger eye pretty effectively, even if they don’t share the work equally. An injury in my “good” eye in my early 30s would complicate things a bit more… but that’s another story. But beyond the practical lessons, this experience taught me a few other things about life I think that has stayed with me, and been more relevant in the past few years than ever, and this is the real reason I feel that this story is worth sharing.
“The perspective of organizational development is very different from that of personal development, and the resources devoted to one are not necessarily created to benefit the other…”
Our society isn’t normally wired toward focusing on our weaknesses. Instead, it seems we put all our energy toward building on strengths, and ignoring everything else. I’m unsure what the root cause of this is, but, as one example, I’ve observed it to be true particularly within corporate culture. There’s a method of professional development I’ve experienced within several different work environments, in which discovering a person’s strengths, and building upon them, is a key focus of Human Resources methodologies. Certainly, this can be useful to a large degree, particularly from the point of view of an organization who seeks to invest in growing long-term employees with as much promise of a return as feasible, and whose concern is primarily focused on the organizational interactions between their teams’ strengths, and fostering up-and-coming leadership among their ranks. However, I would contend that it’s a mistake, from an individual level, to take these same methods to heart. The perspective of organizational development is very different from that of personal development, and the resources devoted to one are not necessarily created to benefit the other, and should be balanced accordingly. I can’t help but wonder a more holistic approach in that regard might be of benefit to organizations than focusing solely on strengths, but for individuals, I would definitely contend that we are doing ourselves more harm than good with that focus. Our weaknesses need at least as much of our attention as much as our strengths, because they’re possibly the barrier to our ability to succeed, and to fully utilize those strengths.
“…As I increasingly value ongoing growth and identify as a lifelong learner above most other pursuits, I’ve found it valuable to mine my own personal story for seeds of growth.”
I’ve become aware of this more than ever in recent years, and as I increasingly value ongoing growth and identify as a lifelong learner above most other pursuits, I’ve found it valuable to mine my own personal story for seeds of growth, an idea that I’ve found as a common theme in my reading from a great variety of voices. As I look back, I realize I’ve always seen the world through a different lens than some. For example, the idea that optimism is “the glass half full” has never quite made sense to me… at best, that seems like mediocre satisfaction with the status quo, and ignore what could be. To me, to recognize the glass as half empty is to see that there’s room for more. Isn’t that optimism? And although the potential of filling that empty space with more can’t be realized without first identifying the opportunity, doing so can understandably be seen as pessimism. “Hey, look at that glass — it’s half empty! Let’s talk about the possibilities for filling it.” Maybe that sounds a little too “Pollyanna” as some would say… but have you seen or read Pollyanna lately? That’s not the insult it seems to be; in that story, the title character is unshakeable upbeat even to the point of being obnoxious, but that’s mainly in contrast to a town full of gloomy people, who are transformed by her spirit in the end. If I ever aspired to be “Pollyanna,” though, I’ve more likely failed by being on the negative end of that spectrum than the positive one, regardless of whatever motivation I might have had.
But let’s talk about motivation for a minute. There are numerous mistakes I’ve made in this regard over the years, and like most things I know with any confidence, I arrived at this knowledge by trying and failing at it from numerous possible angles. For one thing, you can’t assume that people — even people who know and love you — know your motivation if you don’t tell them. It seems almost idiotic, as a professional communicator, for me to admit to having this revelation in my late 40s, but it’s true… nobody knows what’s in your head and heart if you don’t communicate it in some way. Oh, and don’t bother being insulted when you don’t, either. But also, don’t think too highly of how you view your motivation, if you’re justifying negative behavior because somewhere it had its beginnings in a positive, even moral, justification in your own mind. There’s a good reason for that expression about “good intentions” being used to surface steep downhill boulevards. If your “optimism” looks like pessimism, what good is it doing anyone?
As I work through these stories, I’m compelled to conclude a few key lessons. Of course, I’m not here to tell anyone else how to live their life, but I can see clearly now as I look back where I’ve learned lessons I’ll carry with me moving forward in my own journey toward personal growth (it’s quite a long road!). I’m writing this down for my own self-reflection as much as for anyone, and hope that it might be useful for someone else on a similar quest. As I reflect, I’ve arrived at three conclusions.
“If I attach my identity to everything that I am today, then I’m going to take offense at the suggestion that I could grow beyond that.”
First, I need to be open to the possibility of change.
If I attach my identity to everything that I am today, then I’m going to take offense at the suggestion that I could grow beyond that. If, instead, I attach my sense of self-worth to the notion that I’m growing toward something better, then I allow for this possibility. It sounds obvious, but this is a mistake I’ve made quite often, and I think it’s a common factor in a lot of people’s lives. But it’s also crucial to consider how this approach could lead to a sour approach to life if not balanced by an optimistic outlook, and a positive communication style. And if you’re prone to anxiety and leaning on anger as a crutch for emotional expression, then it’s likely that this approach could do more harm than good. And don’t forget that you can’t justify being the armchair change agent to the world… this is about your own capacity — and, ideally, desire — for growth.
Second, I’ve realized that we must first identify an area of weakness, before it’s possible to improve it.
This may sound self-apparent, but consider the alternative; how can we change something we don’t know needs changing? Sometimes, you need people who you love and trust to help you identify the proverbial booger in your nose that you didn’t know was there — but, again, don’t take this as invitation to be somebody else’s critic, uninvited. I believe that everyone can relate to the words of Jackson Browne: “Don’t confront me with my failures; I had not forgotten them.” Remember, this is about self-reflection on your own shortcomings, not those of others.
“I’m not suggesting that the same method of “patching the good eye” is going to be the solution for other problems… if your left arm is broken, tying your right arm behind your back is not going to help.”
Third, seek solutions beyond your own capabilities.
I’m talking to you, me, and anybody reading this now: Don’t be so arrogant to think that you, and you alone, can solve a problem just because you’re aware of it. There’s a whole world of people out there with experience with problems not too dissimilar to what you need help with, and there are people closer to you who care enough to help if asked. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the same method of “patching the good eye” is going to be the solution for other problems; that was a particular method that worked for those particular muscles at that particular stage in development, and was recommended by multiple experts. If your left arm is broken, tying your right arm behind your back is not going to help. What I am saying is that the answer might just be something you wouldn’t have thought of. We’re designed for community, and the vast array of human knowledge is scattered across billions of people, so don’t be an island unto yourself. Fortunately, in our day and age, it’s easier than ever to find trustworthy resources, but don’t forget to also get help with that where needed. That can start by simply taking the leap and asking.
That little six-year-old boy waiting in line at the water fountain in that weird, old spooky school building had no idea what he was teaching me, but I’m grateful for the lessons I carry forward now, and how in recovering his vision he helped me see around some of the “blind spots” I’ve had in the years since. If he made someone else pause and question the reality before them – perhaps that’s you, if you’ve read this far — it’s my hope that he might encourage you to stop and consider some of your own untapped possibilities for self improvement. As for me, I’m working on being open to the prospect of change, of embracing my own weaknesses as opportunities for growth, and seeking outside help to make it possible.
