Monday, June 7, 2010

Questions

Image of perception from drfabian.com. Google image rocks.

I'm sitting in the spare bedroom reading blogs and catching up with Facebook, and I keep smelling sandwich meat. Specifically, the really thin Western Family turkey. You know, the kind that in no way actually resembles turkey, is so thin it can dissolve in your mouth, and kind of smells like hot dogs? I keep smelling that, like when I was a kid and would just eat it straight and smell it on my hands for hours on end. Only thing is, we don't have such meat, and why would it smell like that in the spare bedroom?

It has taken me about 20 minutes to realize it's actually the lilies Justin bought me for my birthday. They are extremely fragrant (in a good way), but apparently somewhere between the dining room and here, the smell has taken a bizarre shift.

This isn't exactly the same, and I know this is a really round-about way of bringing this up, but how often do we (as in you, me, and whoever else) mistake things for something they aren't? How many times in a day are you absolutely certain you are perceiving something correctly, but perception has led you astray? And my biggest question is, how often is that discovered or corrected? Or does it need to be?

I'm not the person with the answers, but I sometimes wonder if anyone asks these questions regularly? Not of anyone else, but of themselves. How often do people double-check themselves, question something they think or assume to be true? I feel like I'm constantly asking these questions, because everytime I think I have the answer, someone else shifts the scales with different possibility. Not everyone can go through life constantly questioning their ideas and beliefs, but if people did more often would there still be fundamentalists? Would people continue to be so stubborn and unforgiving? Would people listen more to other ideas, collaborate more, gain deeper insight and tolerance, or build stronger communities and relationships?

Like most people, I don't like unanswered questions. Which is why I assume most people already have the answer made up in their mind about the world, in both the larger sense and their own personal sphere. I can think of so many things today in which my perception has been greatly altered. My question for everyone else is, when was the last time you questioned your perception of someone, something, someplace? And I don't mean lose confidence in yourself and your place in this world, just question.

Apparently, this whole world is just a matter of perception. And I have a feeling that perceptions are going to be shifting greatly in the near future. But that's just my idea. What is yours?

1 comment:

lee said...

I have no answers to share on the topic, but I would like to say that I believe the opening to this post to be one of the funniest I've read in a long, long time. Glad you're writing regularly again. :)