Emotional Blinders

People pay good money to ride a mule to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Okay. I can live with that. The safety record is pretty good primarily because the mules are sure footed and most of them wear blinders to limit vision to the trail ahead. I mean, think about it. Do you really want to ride a mule constantly distracted by the Grand Canyon landscape? I'm thinking you don't because the mule would surely and quickly fall off the trail.
Blinders, then, can keep us safe.
There is, though, a time to put them on and a time to take them off.
Of course the blinders to which I refer and the blinders we fasten to our own selves -- the emotional blinders with which we see or experience only a small part of our emotional landscape. And here's the kicker, to keep the mule analogy going. We choose when to wear our emotional blinders and we choose which emotion path on which to focus. We can choose anger or we can choose acceptance. We can choose contentment or we can choose distress. We maintain our own emotional trails.
The trouble with blinders is that while limited focus may sometimes keep us safe, we never see the entire, amazing emotional landscape of life.
Once at the top or the bottom of those narrow Grand Canyon trails, the mules have no need for their blinders. They're safe.
You will be, too.