Heart and Mind

Perspectives

The view from my front door is a familiar one. It's as familiar as any other view I have ever known. It's what I see whenever I look out at the world from the place where I live. I look out my front door every day and see the same familiar houses on the other side of the street or next to me as I turn my head and scan the block. The houses are always the same. Sometimes small details at a given house change depending on which cars are in the driveway, how recently the grass was cut, whether there are leaves to be raked, etc. But it basically looks the same. It is my existance, it is what I see when I look out at the world.

No matter how cognizant I am of the notion that perspectives are subjective, it's always a wild and intriguing experience on those rare occasions where I find myself at one of my neighbors' houses. It is fascinating for me to look across the street and see my house from that angle. It's almost surreal to be standing in the picture that I see every day, and to get that sense that it is very familiar, and yet completely different. It is what my familiar picture looks like when I'm in it, not when I'm looking at it from afar. And, of course, it is quite mind blowing to think that the view of my house from across the street is part of the make-up of my neighbors' familiar front-door-view of the world. And it's a different look than I pictured. It's kind of like seeing a picture of yourself in profile. We all are quite familiar with what we look like head-on, and even at 45 degrees in either direction, because that's what we see in the mirror. Beyond that, though, we're not too used to seeing ourselves, even though we know what we look like and have seen profile pictures before.

I think that discussing the view of your house from across the street is an interesting subject at face value. But it also can represent a larger issue: perspectives in life, in general. Everything that is bizzare and brilliant about the different view on my house is applicable to our outlooks on the world. We have a view of the world that is completely subjective. We are always in "the first person" in the storybook of our lives. We've never been anyone else. Everything we have ever observed we did so by standing in our own bodies. Our eyes and ears are the front doors that we're looking out.

Even when see things from other people's points of view, we are exercizing learned-skills like empathy but, ultimately, we can only imagine what other people see, feel, or experience based on whether we can figure out a way to relate. And even then, we're not sure. I can imagine what it is like to see the world through your eyes, and I probably get a good bead on it much of the time. But I can never be sure, can I?

It kind of blows my mind to think that I am always with myself. You can never escape from yourself. You are the only person who has every been a party to every single thing you've ever done from the most mundane to the most exciting to the most shocking to the most secretive. And you not only have that great track record of being there, you have no choice. You have to be there. And, similarly, everything you ever take in you do so through your own senses. Your own perspective. That is your world.

posted by Steve @ 9:12 PM