Perspective Matters

This morning, as I drove toward the other side of the valley, I noticed the murky distance. 

The buildings downtown were hardly visible. 

I took this after our outing. The skyline looked even murkier earlier today.

A while later at the garden, from the other side of the valley, I looked toward home. I thought the sky was clear and sunny where I live.
I was surprised to see that though the haze looked brighter, it was still hazy. 

It made me think about perspective. 

I thought I was leaving blue skies and descending into the murk,
when really, both sides of the valley were more alike than different.

Looking toward home. We live in the distant middle of the low clouds.

While at the garden, I also looked at the glass exhibit in the visitor center. 

I was trying to capture what I saw in one particular piece. 

The following three pictures are of that same creation. 

Yes, they are spirals, which caught my attention because I love spirals. 

Unlike my phone camera, my eyes were able to focus on the way the sun was shining through the outside windows and into the colorful glass. My eyes could filter out everything else that was not this work of art. The camera is obviously less selective.

Perspective matters.

That led me to thinking about the phrase, "Perception is reality."

Each of the pictures above was taken by me, with my phone camera, and around the same time.

They're all "true" pictures of the same thing, but they also look different.

No wonder it's so difficult to see "eye to eye." We can see the same things, but see them distinctly. Each viewpoint is true from our individual perspective. 

We can't read people's minds. We don't know people's motivations. 

We all go through private traumas and triumphs. 

I can accept that we all have unique realities. 

I don't expect people to believe or disbelieve like me or to feel what I feel. 

Even so, sometimes I wish I could share the beauty and joy and truth that I experience. 

It is wonderful to feel truly, deeply understood. Shared experience does that to some extent, but it takes accumulative and successive moments to feel truly known. It is easy to isolate ourselves, to stay home, to have our only contact be through technological devices which can distort reality more than eyes, ears, noses, and hands. Listening to other people's perspectives is helpful. 

Being together, face to face and hands to hands, matters. 

My guess is if we did that more often, 

we'd be surprised to discover we're all more alike than different.