Once every month, in college, all my voice teacher's students gathered together for a master class. We sang for each other and critiqued each other. It was always a nerve-wracking, challenging, high-growth experience.

One girl I saw every month had a peculiar habit. Like me, she had red hair and fair skin — and light eyelashes and eyebrows that required cosmetic enhancement just to be seen. But it was the way she made up her eyebrows that caught my attention.

The first time I say the girl, I'll call Judy, I couldn't stop staring. As she spoke, we made eye contact, but my gaze kept shifting up to her eyebrows. It was like I was a guy face-to-face with a girl whose bosoms were bursting out of her blouse or something and I couldn't stop ogling her chest. Except that her “chest” was on her forehead. And I could not. stop. looking.

She had a very dark brown markings drawn above each of her eyes with sharp eyebrow pencil. Each had a defined perfect circle near the bridge of her nose with a trailing swoop penciled outward like a shooting comet. They were cleanly outlined and penciled in, like the comma of a very large typeface.

I looked around to see if others noticed. Were any jaws agape? Were people snickering? Had she just come from the Margett's theater downstairs where she was playing the part of a possessed marionette?

For a few minutes I googled for “comma eyebrows” and “freaky eyebrows” and “eyebrows you can't stop staring at.” None of the results did the ones in my story justice. But try these and these and these on for size. Or maybe this.

What was painfully obvious to me and, I'm sure, every sighted person in America, didn't seem obvious to Judy. She was a very pretty girl — all other thing considered. She was attending a fairly prestigious private college. She was talented and likable. But she apparently could not see the glaring, clownish eyebrows she intentionally painted on her face each morning.

How could she have such enormous blinders?

A few years before that, while at work one day, I took an order from a middle-aged woman who had those big old 1970s eyeglasses. The top of the squarish frames aligned almost perfectly with her brown eyebrows. In order to compensate, I suppose, for having her eyebrows obscured by the frame, she used a black eyeliner to draw a second set of eyebrows about a half inch above her natural brow.

Another try-not-to-stare moment brought to you by someone with blinders as big as life. People who can't see the truth when it's about to bite them between the eyes.

So, let's talk about truth. The truth is, we all wear blinders. Some are to appearance and other physical attributes. Some are to character and moral issues. Some are to lifestyle and choices.

Most of us have flaws that are glaringly apparent to others, but we remain oblivious. A

Now, it is true that some of these things we really can't see. Either we weren't taught to see the problem or we sincerely don't think it's worth being bothered by. But most of us have character or behavior defects that we ignore because facing them is too scary or too painful to deal with. We are really just lying to ourselves to provide temporary relief.

Lies destroy progress, compromise character, and ruin relationships.

Understanding the truth — that the truth can set you free and ignoring it becomes a burden that bogs you down and causes stress and pain — is the first step to moving on with your life. Look at where and who you are squarely and honestly. Decide what you can do to change the truths that you don't like.

Here are Gary Ryan Blair's pointed questions:

• What are you pretending not to know?
• What truth are you hiding from?
• What part of your reality do you find undesirable?

Take an honest assessment of your life. It's the best set of information with which you can improve and create the life you dream of.

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