Kay:
Hey there Questers and welcome back. Happy Monday. We hope you have a marvelous one. It’s December 7th, and this is episode 241 with a Helen Keller quote for you today and she says, “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.”
Shi:
This was good, old fashioned advice from a good, old fashioned, inspirational character, Helen Keller. I kind of feel like one of those very first inspirational characters you meet in elementary school. It’s definitely one of the first names you learned along with Harriet Tubman and like figures from the past, particularly women, which there aren’t much of – but such an inspirational person and such good, old-fashioned advice here.
Kay:
Well, we’ve got to love someone who is both blind and deaf making a career out of teaching philosophy, writing poetry, creating sonnets. I mean, she really overcame insurmountable odds and became an inspiration to the entire world for generations. But really when we get down to it, this message is pretty flipping simple. What she’s saying here is just look for some of the positive things around you, maybe instead of focusing on the shadows.
Shi:
Right. It’s the energy that goes where focus flows. It’s the, you manifest what you think about, you become what you think about. There are so many different ways to say it but this spin on it here gives us a little bit of a metaphor to imagine because we all know the sensation of having our face in the sun and the shadow behind us. In the physical sense, it can be easier to turn to the sun than it is sometimes in the metaphorical sense with your thinking.
Kay:
Yes. I mean, oftentimes when we are feeling the emotional shadows, it can be difficult to let the light in, and sometimes your ego can enjoy the sensation of being wounded because there’s some significance around that. When you’re wounded, your friends come around and when you’re hurting, people ask you what’s wrong. So, there can be a little bit of significance when it comes to focusing on the shadows, but oftentimes that doesn’t lead to a very fulfilling life. So, keeping your eye on the sunshine and maybe letting it reach those darker places of your life can really help you in the long run.
Shi:
Yes. You know, we were recently hearing Joseph McClendon speak at Unleash the Power Within and he was talking about when you’re younger, you learn these patterns. And these associations become behaviors and personality types. But if you’re a little kid and you fall and you get hurt and your mom runs over and gives you all this love and attention, if that happens enough times consecutively, you start to associate pain with love and attention. So. this might not necessarily even be your fault that what you’re always doing by default is looking for shadows, but it can be and should be your responsibility to turn yourself around and face that sun because it’ll put the shadows behind you and it’ll help you see so much more, which is really the point of this quote.
Kay:
The other dimension in this quote that I really love is that she doesn’t say, “turn your eye to the sun.” She says, “turn your face to the sun,” which means your entire body shifting in that direction. You’re literally shifting in the direction of positivity and Shila and I like to think of this visual sometimes when we’re heading into tough things of squaring your shoulders. I’m going to square my shoulders before I get into something, I’m facing the sunshine. What I love about this message is that I think it really comes down to knowing that you can’t focus on two things at once. If I told you to focus on one thing out of your left eye and focus on another thing out of your right eye at the same time, you wouldn’t be able to do it. You literally have two sides of a brain that can focus on one task at a time. So, turn both your eyes and your entire face and mind to the sunshine and the positive. And it’s not that the shadows don’t exist after that, it’s that you can’t see them. It’s that they aren’t the prevalent thing in your mind’s eye.
Shi:
When a race car driver crashed or hit the wall they interviewed and asked them, “What’s the last thing you saw?” And they always say “the wall” and you might think, “well, yeah, that’s because right before they hit it.” But when they start to unpack that more in those few seconds leading up to the crash, which of course high speeds, things are happening very quickly, they’re focused on the wall, and with that focus on the wall goes, the wheel goes, the attention and the momentum go, and the car goes towards that wall. Same thing if a car crashes in the desert, an open space. 9 times out of 10, that car will hit the telephone pole and crash into that. And one might think, “How could you hit it amidst everything here?” And it’s because they looked at the pole, they focused on the pole and they drove the car right to the pole. That pole can be our shadows or our dark thoughts or the things that we want to avoid or not get trapped in focusing on. But they’re hard not to, that’s why we want to turn our whole bodies away from that shadow. Get our face up in that sunshine and see all of the possibilities that lie ahead in the future.
Kay:
So just a reminder, Helen Keller’s quote for you is, “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.”
Shi:
Which means it’s time for a quest.
Kay:
Whoop! Whoop!
Shi:
Today, your quest is to physically turn towards the sun and soak up some of that beautiful vitamin D and the dopamine that it releases. And then, try to create your own metaphorical sunshine too! Are you ready?
Kay and Shi:
Let’s quest!
