Making Glasses: A New Year's Resolution About Seeing, Not Becoming

Stop Fixing Your Life. Start Cleaning Your Lens

A deep dive into the psychological lenses of 

trauma, faith, love, and authority that shape your reality

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The most honest resolution isn't about a new life, but a new lens

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At the beginning of every year, people announce resolutions like confessions shouted into the void.

Lose weight.
Make more money.
Be happier.
Be better.

All of them share the same assumption: that life improves by adding something.

But then someone said something quietly different.

This year, I want to make glasses.

Not metaphorically.
Literally.

And that was when it struck me —
This might be one of the most honest resolutions I’ve heard in years.

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The Forgotten Question: How Are You Seeing?

Most resolutions obsess over outcomes. Very few question the lens. We chase change while looking at the world through:

• Unhealed wounds
• Inherited beliefs
• Social pressure
• Religious fear
• Unresolved resentment

And then we’re surprised when life keeps repeating itself.

Psychologically, this is familiar terrain. Humans don’t experience reality directly; we experience interpretations.

The mind is not a window.
It is a filter.
And filters, when scratched or cracked, 

distort everything they touch.

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Blurry Vision Feels Like Truth When It’s All You’ve Known

Many people live their entire lives without realising their vision is blurred.

They call it being:

• Realistic
• Cautious
• Faithful
• Loyal

But often, it’s just unquestioned conditioning.

Trauma teaches the eye to expect danger.
Authority teaches the eye to obey.
Fear teaches the eye to narrow.

Soon, the world feels hostile, disappointing, and unsafe because the lens says so. And the most dangerous part?

When a distorted lens feels normal, clarity feels threatening.

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Making Glasses is an Act of Responsibility

To make glasses is to admit something radical:

The problem may not be the world.
It might be how I’ve been seeing it.

This is not self-blame. This is self-honesty.
It’s the psychological shift from:

• Victimhood → Agency
• Reaction → Awareness
• Projection → Ownership

You stop asking, “Why does this keep happening to me?”
and start asking, “What lens am I using that keeps producing this view?”

That question alone can dismantle years of repetition.

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Choosing a Lens is a Moral Act

No one sees neutrally. Every lens carries values.

Some lenses amplify fear.
Some glorify suffering.
Some sanctify authority.
Some romanticise pain.

Others cultivate:

• Empathy without naivety
• Boundaries without cruelty
• Meaning without illusion

To choose a lens is to choose what kind of human you will be.

That’s why clarity is dangerous to systems built on control.

A person who sees clearly doesn’t:

• Need constant validation
• Confuse obedience with virtue
• Outsource conscience to noise

Clear vision produces quiet strength. And quiet strength is hard to manipulate.

Lens I: Trauma

When Survival Becomes Identity

Trauma is not the event. Trauma is the lens left behind after the event has passed. What once protected you can quietly become your prison.

A traumatised lens sees:

• Boundaries as abandonment
• Silence as a threat
• Disagreement as rejection
• Distance as punishment

The nervous system stays on guard long after the danger is gone. Life becomes a series of pre-emptive strikes: withdraw first, harden first, assume the worst — just in case.

Psychologically, this is understandable. But spiritually and relationally, it is corrosive.
Survival is not the same as living. And protection is not the same as truth.

Many people confuse being “strong” with being permanently guarded. 

They call hypervigilance — wisdom.

They call numbness — peace.

But clarity asks a harder question:
Is this lens still protecting you, or is it preventing you from seeing?

Lens II: Faith

When Belief Replaces Responsibility

Faith was never meant to blind. It was meant to illuminate. Yet when faith becomes a lens inherited instead of examined, it stops pointing inward and starts pointing outward.

Through this lens:

• Suffering is explained instead of being relieved
• Authority is defended instead of questioned
• Obedience replaces conscience
• God becomes a narrative shield

This is where faith quietly mutates into authorisation.

If everything is “God’s will,” 

If every disaster is “a test,”
No one has to ask about systems, power, or negligence.

No one has to ask about accountability.

A faith that forbids questioning is not faith.
It is fear wearing sacred language.

Wise faith does not collapse under inquiry. It deepens. It does not outsource morality to heaven
while ignoring harm on earth.

A clear lens does not ask:
“What should I believe?”
but
“What kind of human does this belief make me?”

Lens III: Love

When Attachment Masquerades as Devotion

Love is where distortion hides best, because longing feels holy. An unclear lens turns attachment into destiny.

It says:

• “I need you” instead of “I choose you”
• “You complete me” instead of “I stand whole beside you”
• “Without you, I disappear” instead of “With you, I grow”

Psychologically, this is insecure attachment.
Poetically, it sounds romantic.
Spiritually, it is dependence disguised as union.

Love is not proven by pain endured.

It is revealed by the growth allowed.

A clear lens does not erase longing; it removes illusion.

It knows the difference between:

• Connection and possession
• Devotion and self-erasure
• Loyalty and fear of loss

Mature love does not cling.

It stands.

Lens IV: Power & Authority

When Control Disguises Itself as Order

Power is not the problem. Unexamined power is.

Authority was meant to organise responsibility. But through a distorted lens, it becomes a shortcut to certainty.

This lens teaches people to:

• Obey before understanding
• Respect position over integrity
• Surrender conscience to structure
• Confuse submission with virtue

Psychologically, this offers relief.

Someone else decides. 

Someone else knows. 

Someone else carries the burden. 

But relief is not truth. Authority feels comforting when thinking feels dangerous. This is why systems — religious, political, cultural, even relational — often discourage inner clarity.

A person who sees clearly is hard to control.
A person who trusts their own conscience does not kneel easily.

So authority reshapes itself as:

• Tradition
• How things have always been
• Moral high ground
• Divine endorsement

Power stops asking “Is this right?”
and starts declaring “This is how it is.”

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Why These Lenses Matter

Trauma shapes how we react.

Faith shapes how we justify.
Love shapes how we attach.

If all three are distorted, life becomes loud, exhausting, repetitive. 

People change partners, religions, cities, careers, but the same emotional conclusions keep appearing.

Because the lens never changed.

You don’t need a new life.
You need clearer sight.

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Where This Lens Becomes Toxic

Under this lens:

• Silence is labelled respect
• Questioning is labelled rebellion
• Boundaries are called disobedience
• Autonomy is framed as ego

In relationships, this looks like:

• Emotional withholding as punishment
• “I don’t owe you explanations”
• Control disguised as calm
• Distance framed as maturity

In religion, it looks like:

• God used to end conversations
• Scripture used to bypass empathy
• Doctrine replacing accountability

In society, it looks like:

• Laws without humanity
• Order without justice
• Hierarchy without wisdom

Authority that cannot be questioned is not stable.
It is brittle.

And when these distorted lenses interact with others, with systems, with ourselves, they create patterns of toxicity that feel almost impossible to break.

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Clear Authority vs. Inherited Authority

A clear lens distinguishes between:

• Authority earned vs authority assumed
• Guidance vs control
• Leadership vs dominance

True authority does not fear dialogue. It does not need silence to survive. It welcomes scrutiny because it is rooted in responsibility, not image.

Power that avoids conversation is already aware of its weakness.

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Why This Lens Completes the Picture

Trauma explains the reaction.
Faith explains justification.
Love explains attachment.
Power explains why distortion is maintained.

Because distorted lenses benefit someone. 

Someone gains obedience.

Someone avoids accountability. 

Someone remains unquestioned.

And often, painfully, that someone is not “them”.
It is us, clinging to certainty because clarity demands courage.

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The Uncomfortable Truth

You don’t become free by removing authority. 

You become free by outgrowing blind obedience.
You don’t lose humility by questioning. 

You lose illusion. 

And illusion is expensive. It costs years, relationships, self-trust, and peace.

The clearest lens does not rebel for the sake of rebellion.
It simply refuses to surrender its conscience.

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The Quiet Wisdom

Making glasses is not glamorous. No applause. No announcement.

It is the slow, often painful act of:

• Examining what you assume
• Questioning what comforts you
• Releasing what once kept you safe

It is choosing clarity over certainty.
Responsibility over explanation.
Presence over performance.

And that choice is where real adulthood begins.

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A Different Kind of Resolution

Becoming someone new is not the most mature resolution. Maturity is when you can see honestly for the first time.

Seeing:

• People as they are, not as we wish
• Love without fantasy
• Faith without fear
• Pain without mythology

Not to become cold but to become grounded. Because growth doesn’t begin when life changes. It begins when the lens does.

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Closing Thought

Many people change their lives without ever changing how they look at them.
That’s why the same stories keep repeating; the characters change.

So this year, before you promise to fix your life, ask yourself something quieter, braver, and far more dangerous:

How am I really seeing?

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