From outside the box

I was answering a comment made to me concerning my last blog about perspective and inner reality, and it motivated me to write a little more on some thoughts I have about perspective. Isn't it interesting how your perspective changes on something once you get interested in it or get to know more about it? In my response in my last blog (see comments at end of blog), I referred to old furniture, especially antiques. I used to always see antiques as just old stuff. Once I became interested in them and started actually buying and selling them, my whole way of looking at old furniture changed. Where I used to see junk I started seeing treasures. The funny part is, nothing changed about the "junk", just my perspective. It's like they came into focus.

I remember when I was younger how music used to sound to me. Once I started learning music and playing an instrument, I heard the same old songs in a whole new light. What I used to accept as just a song became a structure of chords and notes that I could break down in my mind as I listened to it. Now I could hear embellished chords, passing chords, 12 bar structures, 3rd and 5th harmonies, as well as know what the chord changes were in the song. I could appreciate the complexities as well as the simplicities of music in ways I never could before.

And this leads me to wonder about the things I know very little about. What does an astronomer see when he looks into a starry sky at night? What does a doctor see when he watches somebody walking down the street? What does an artist see when they look at a painting? They must be noticing blends of colors and types of brush strokes that most of us would never think about. When a home builder looks at any given house, they must see angles and form in a way that most of us would never think about. What does a director see when they look at somebody else's movie? What does a molecular physicist see when he looks at....well, anything!

The interesting thing about all of this is that we are all looking at or listening to the same thing, but with different perspectives. Many things are not in focus to us the way they are to somebody else. I often wonder about this as I'm driving around or walking. I like to look at things and see what new aspects of that thing I can notice about it. I wonder what I would see if I studied the structure or the composition of that thing for several years, how differently would I see it? How much more is there to notice if I try to step outside the box of my accustomed perspective and look a little deeper?

A student once asked his spiritual teacher what the teacher saw when he looked at him. The teachers response was, "When I look at you I see only light." The teacher was saying that he saw the greatest potential in everything that he looked at. That's not a bad way to look at the world. Imagine if we applied this same perspective of looking at things to how we look at each other? Wouldn't it be a better world if we could see, or at least tried to see, the greatest potential in each other rather than the superficial that meets the eye?