Look At It

We often say that seeing is believing. Good advice, that. It’s one the thing to be told that the Louvre is amazing, it’s another thing to behold it yourself. And by the way, don’t be a sucker, don’t believe every story every fool tells you. Go see for yourself. Let experience be your teacher, and so make your own decisions about what is and isn’t true. All of this is true in its way, but the reverse is true also: believing is seeing. You cannot see what you do not believe exists. For instance, perhaps you would like to make a living publishing ebooks on CreateSpace. If you believe such a thing is possible, you will begin to see evidence to support this belief even before you write your first ebook. The evidence will all be circumstantial, of course. You will notice stories about this first-time author who sold 100,000 books, or that midlist writer who abandoned traditional publishing in favor of doing it herself and is selling more than ever before. The evidence will accumulate to support the belief until you try your hand at it and now you are maybe one more success story to support someone else’s belief.

Or maybe you don’t believe it. It’s all luck and you aren’t lucky. You’ve got a long list of evidence of your unluck – the rejection letters, the cheating boyfriend, the alcoholic mother. Life’s a crapshoot whose rewards are given to the deserving and undeserving equally. Look at all the lousy books on the bestseller list. You’ve done better and yet look at your rejection letters. You won’t be a sucker and believe in what you cannot see. Look at life—look at it! Look at that mess. How can anyone not see what a mess it is?

I used to take this last question for an accusation, but maybe it is just the opposite. To see something lovely I must first believe in loveliness. Otherwise, I will see only ugliness and ugliness cynically masquerading as beauty. I waited a long time for the world to tell me what it was, all the while it was only listening to me, echoing everything I thought in what I saw.