Title: Teach My Eyes
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Blog Entry: This is an experiment about what we see day to day. I did not originate this experiment. I'm just passing it along because I find a point to it. If you find the point to it, well, that's up to you. The more I contemplate this, the more my words get in the way of what I find in this experiment. My round thoughts don't fit snugly into my square words it seems. That said, on to the experiment. Look around the environment in which you find yourself. It may be a tiny room with your computer and full of stacks of your paperwork. It may be a coffee shop full of mismatched chairs and indie art. It may be a drab colored cubical or it may even be a green park full of still trees. Wherever you are, look around you. Now whisper to yourself the word "blue" and see what happens. Did everything the color blue jump out at you? Then try some other colors...yellow, green, hazel, gray or whatever. Now do it all again. This time try to notice how all the objects not the color you whispered are still in your perception, but they just seem to not matter as much because they aren't the word you chose to see. This is how most of us see. Of course there are exceptions. There's color blind folks and whatnot. Let's say most of us are visual beings, however this works for our other senses as well. Pay attention to the next song you hear and whisper the words "snare drum" or go to a crowded party and utter "female voices". The next meal you taste think "salt" or "garlic". When you go outside, take an inventory of which parts of your body are warm or cold. Can you separate the elements that make up the smell you're partaking in at the moment? Mine is cheap shampoo, wool, coffee, dust, pine, 409 and dirty sneakers. Once again look around you. Instead of muttering a color, blurt out a subjective word such as "beautiful" or "calm". What jumps out at you now? What happens if you try the same thing with your other senses? It seems we have a remarkable ability to differentiate the components of our sensual input in logical and subjective ways. Now going beyond the senses, what if you were to try this with your thoughts and emotions? Hmmm. Here's where words get in the way. From a certain vantage, there is no external good or bad. We are just given what happens to us. Cosmic bodies collide, volcanoes erupt, waves slam into shores, storms blow in then subside, trees grow then fall...people act like people. We are not in control of the universe or what happens to us in it. We do have a little control over how we feel about what happens to us in it. We are in complete control of what we take from what happens to us and our reaction to it. For some reason, I continually have to jumpstart my positive side. I have to do this on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis, but it's worth it. This air smells clean, this shower is nice and warm, this music is danceable, this coffee is robust, this gas bill is a nice shade of blue, this traffic jam exercises my patience...ad infintum. Since I'm human it doesn't always work, but there's always something positive there when I allow myself to look. I start slow and small, keep putting one foot in front of the other, and let time pass. My world can get cloudy, but I continue to try to teach my eyes to see only the silver.
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