My friend Jen is a real estate agent. Through her work she meets all sorts of people and one day she was telling me a little about the variety of personalities that she had encountered. One couple in particular caught my attention because they were blind.
“You mean only the husband is blind, right?” I asked.
“Nope, both husband and wife are blind,” she replied.
“Well, that’s a lot of people you have to take around to find them the right property since they must have a relative or friend with them - one who can see,” I said sympathetically.
“Nope, they depend on me to describe everything,” she said.
This was so out of my realm of thinking! Yet, as I’ve pondered the situation I’m led to consider the huge level of trust these people have in Jen. And in her own way she describes the sense of responsibility she feels to respect the limitations their lack of sight brings, even to the daily language that she uses when she is with them. Take for instance a typical phrase for Jen, ‘We have three properties to see today.’ The couple is very easygoing about it all but Jen is careful anyway.
Trust. With that small little word the couple has lost a magnitude of limitations being blind may have imposed on house or apartment buying. And perhaps because I’ve always had my vision I think only of limitations. But I bet they are not nearly as limited as I think!
That puts me at a fork in the road with two avenues to pursue: trust and limitations.
Trust means putting your reliance on the integrity of another person. Oh, but many of us have been caught by the salesman who spoke so well yet had only snake oil for sale. His immediate goal was of relieving you of your money; yet, I don’t believe that represents most people. I think most people mean well though they make mistakes, say the wrong thing, or take an inappropriate action, with no malicious intent. The trouble is that in the process they break the trust you had in them. Forgiveness is the only way to ease the pain of a broken trust. That includes when you feel that you have broken the trust you had in yourself for believing that person in the first place.
Limitation is a belief that there is a restrictive weakness, an inability or a handicap in the ability to do something. And while the obvious limitation for Jen’s client is that he will never see the colour red, it does not mean he can never have that colour in his life. It just means that he has to find ways around his limitation to include it in his surroundings. The problem is that we often limit ourselves though we have no precluding restrictions.
Suddenly trust and limitations seemed intertwined. Do you limit yourself because you don’t trust yourself? Can you trust that when life all goes haywire it just means you’re learning a new way of handling a situation? Or will you limit what you do trusting that life will sail along happily and easily the majority of the time? How far outside of your box will you trust yourself to go?
You are far greater than any limitations you may think you have but only you can decide to trust in yourself.