Rose Colored Glasses

Rose colored glasses can help us be optimistic about our prospects, or they can give us a distorted view of what is coming, preventing us from seeing clearly. A person who is a visionary or a dreamer has probably had experiences with both views.

Looking forward brings those risks, but so does looking backward.

Some people look back at times past as if it were all wonderful, turning a blind eye to real problems or glossing them over.

It is lovely to have flowers in my life. I place fresh flowers on my table every time I read at a fair, festival or special event. I keep fresh flowers in my apartment. When I lived in a house and had room for a garden, I grew flowers. They add vitality and beauty.

There are all kinds and colors of flowers, so I don't know why the saying refers to rose colored glasses instead of orchid colored glasses, iris colored glasses, daffodil colored glasses, bergamot colored glasses, lavender colored glasses, crepe myrtle colored glasses, tulip colored glasses, lilac colored glasses, black eyed susan colored glasses or echinacea colored glasses. Those are all beautiful colors.

Anyway, there is a truth in this odd expression that people usually overlook.

To have roses grow in your garden, you have to tend those plants, pruning, protecting them from bugs, mulching, fertilizing, watering, and then eventually you enjoy the beautiful flowers. They don't just bloom all year round.

So too, for creating our future. It takes a lot of work to shape the events and relationships in our lives. It takes work to cultivate a career and a career change, which means that just like the rose garden we need to dig in and cultivate before we see flowers.

If we apply the rose colored glasses saying to our memories of the past, it wouldn't be hard to find examples of wonderful, sweet events, but the past also contained difficulties that we would not choose to relive. But there again, it may have been necessary to work our way through those difficulties in order to cherish the sweetness and happiness.

There is nothing so bad about rose colored glasses. We just have to keep the whole picture in mind. We need to be able to be optimistic while getting our hands dirty. That's how we get roses.