Have you ever done any “people watching”? If you have, you know that it can be some good times.
People do strange stuff when they think no one is looking. Sometimes they do strange stuff even when they know.
You’ve been driving down the road and perhaps glanced across at another driver just in time to see him or her knuckle deep in their nose. Or you’ve been in a store and observed the people as they go about their business. Some of them take less care with their attire than others. The people walking around with with almost a full length of butt crack hanging out. The people who have been a bit creative with their personal grooming and hygiene (read: none). There are entire websites dedicated to the observation of the crazy around us.
I remember one day while I was still a designer, I was helping out in the bindery where all the product gets put together into it’s final physical form. As I was back there this other guy says “Whoa, check this out.”
Our building was a one story building with large glass windows all along one side. Across the street were small, residential houses.
I looked to where this guy was pointing out across the street. At first I didn’t see it, but then I did.
The window in the house across the street had the blinds open. And the super hottie who slept in that room had apparently come back from the shower.
And she apparently was oblivious that were blinds were open. She proceed to wander around naked in her room, exposed to anyone who drove by, or as it turned out, may have accidentally noticed from across the street and immediately made sure not to stare. Not, of course after a couple minutes of gaping mouth staring. I mean, who would do that? That would be wrong.
Moving on…
Perhaps you’ve watched people struggling with problems and you can look at it and you know exactly what they need to do, but they can’t seem to figure it out.
We are all great observers when it comes to the things outside of us.
We are not great observers of ourselves.
With others we can be relatively detached from the story happening to them. We can look at it, see the different sides to it, and find multiple scenarios in which the story can play out.
But with ourselves, we can’t see the whole story. We only see the part we are playing and become consumed by it. We are so close to it we can only see the one part.
Once upon a time I was an art type person doing graphic design and other such things. When you have a digital project on the screen, sometimes you have to zoom in real close to work on different aspects of the layout. The programs often allow you to zoom in so far that all you can see are a few pixels of the picture or layout you are creating. When you do this, all you can see are one or two colors of a greater spectrum of pixels.
At this range, you have no idea what the whole thing looks like. If someone were to walk by and look, they wouldn’t have a clue.
However, if you zoom out, suddenly that one pixel becomes lost in the sea of pixels, and a larger, more complete picture reveals itself.
Something else that happens when working on projects like that is, we may have to problem solve while working on the layout. You are trying to accomplish goal X, but can’t quite see the solution. After banging your head for hours, you go do something else before you start breaking things.
But then something strange happens. When you come back later and take a look, you suddenly see the solution to your problem staring you in the face. It was there the whole time, but you just could not see it.
You were too close.
You weren’t observing the entire picture properly because you were consumed by the problem. It happened more than once that while I was banging my head, someone would come buy and instantly see the solution that I could not see. All because they were not caught up in the problem.
Our lives are exactly like that. We can’t see our way through something because we are simply too close to it. We are not observing the entire picture.
We only see the one pixel.
We only see the problem.
We simply have no perspective on the situation.
The other side of this is also true. Sometimes we refuse to see that there is a problem.
This happens all the time when editing a project or written work. You can spend hours pouring your heart and soul into the work. Maybe you have a blog (um…) and you spend all kinds of time pouring words into your computer. You know exactly what is suppose to be there. But being the responsible person you are (ahem…) you go back over it and proof read the whole thing. Two and three times even.
By the third time you stop finding mistakes. Sometimes you stop finding them after the first time.
Then, happy with your final product, you place it in your blog, save it, and hit the “post” button.
Then, someone reads it. Immediately, they find the half dozen mistakes you couldn’t see.
It happened all the time when I was doing layout for a living. Although never with my blog. (Shut up, I know there are all manner of errors in my grammar and spelling. Let me dream…)
I would proof it over and over, and then hand it too my boss and ask him to have a look. He’d hand it back covered in red ink.
It turns out, I’m terrible at proofing my own work. And, as it turns out, so are most everyone else. It’s actually a thing in the editing world. It’s why editors exist in the first place. The person who creates something can’t see the “mistakes” because they know what was suppose to be there and their mind fills in the rest.
If you hand me someone else's work, I can find all the mistakes. But hand me my own, and I find only some.
Interestingly enough, if I come back to it at some later date and re-read something, I start finding all kinds of mistakes. This is because my brain has moved on to other things and isn’t filling in the blanks anymore.
And, again, this is true with us in our lives.
We are messing things up and we are causing ourselves problems and we can’t even see it. The people around us are going nuts because of us, but we are oblivious and think its all them. They are the problem. They have the problem.
But not me.
My brain is superimposing a fiction over the reality based on our intentions and our perception of what we thought was going to happen.
No, I wasn’t acting like a moron. I handled my excess sugar or alcohol or crack just fine. I don’t know what you are talking about.
What? I wasn’t out of control. I wasn’t the angry person. I wasn’t being a jerk. They are just stupid.
It wasn’t my fault my kid/wife got hit. They were out of control. If they’d just do things like they are suppose to and get it together, it wouldn’t happen.
No, I’ve never hit my wife or nonexistent kids.
But this is how we rationalize things.
Or, just as wrongly, this is how we not see the truth of our lives.
We have to become dispassionate observers of our own lives. Learn to step back in our heads and take a broader look. Let the thoughts flow through, but instead of letting them rule us, step away and see what they are. Our thoughts, our emotions, our impetus to action.
One must learn to take control of their own head. Learn to slow things down. Learn to detach ones self from the situation and observe just like you would if it were anyone else. Learn to not let the situation rule us. Learn to not let our thoughts rule us.
All of these things are creating a story of who we are and what is happening to us. But we need to ask ourselves if we are in charge of the story, or if the story is in charge of us? Can we see our lives clearly, or are we living in a shadow and fog of illusion?
Whichever it is, there is good news. You have the power to control how this works for you. Once you accept that, suddenly you see how anything can be changed.
But first, you have to see it.
No comments:
Post a Comment