As a child, I wore pinhole glasses with side shields. I had Coats’ Disease and was one of the youngest patients to undergo pre-laser photo-coagulation, where swollen blood vessels on my retina were burned into place. As their youngest and most active patient, the specialists feared that even slight eye movement might breach the scars and leave me blind. Their solution was to narrow and control my vision to protect it. To see more, I had to move my head, mentally stitching fragments into a larger, coherent picture.
Today, too many choose to live this way—peering at the world not only through pinhole glasses but through pinhole windows in houses of self-imposed isolation.
We are fortunate to have the ability to see both panorama and detail. Yet many deliberately confine themselves to the narrowest slits of vision. They call it principle, but it is often blindness. When you see only fragments, you are not informed—you are managed. Critical thinking can change this. It helps us see beyond fragments, connect the dots, and make informed decisions.
Life is messy, confusing, thrilling and interconnected. To reduce it to one grievance, one tribe, or one slogan is not clarity; it is surrender. Families and communities depend on us to see beyond personal outrage. Narrow vision produces narrow outcomes—divisive politics, social inequality, and environmental degradation. Such outcomes almost always serve those in power, not those staring through the pinhole.
Isolation breeds fragility. Fragile citizens are the easiest to rule. People who see only what they want soon treat alternative views as offensive rather than essential. That is a weakness, not a strength. And it plays into the hands of those who designed the house, who placed the windows exactly where they want you to look. They don’t want you to see the horizon. Their concern is not you—it never was.
As a child, I had no choice; my parents and doctors demanded the glasses. As an adult, I do. And so do you. To widen your view does not mean agreeing with every perspective, but it does mean choosing to understand rather than accept without question.
My treatments gave me two things: the gift of sight in one eye, and an appreciation for looking beyond monocular perspectives. Life is not a snippet or a shard. It is a mosaic. Each tile taken in isolation is meaningless, maybe even deceptive. But the whole is magical. The choice is stark: stitch together the fragments, or let others decide what you see. Choose depth and insight. Never surrender your vision. Step out of the pinhole window house, discard the pinhole glasses, and turn your head on a swivel to absorb the beauty of a limitless world. #NeverFearTheDream
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