The Way I See It

The way I see it
A very rough first draft
By Trevor Gustafson

Vision is a gift that all of us have been given. Even those who are blind can see. I am not talking about eye sight explicitly, but rather any contact with the world around us. Even Helen Keller, a girl who was both blind and deaf, had contact with the world around her. Sure she could not see the things around her, or hear the people around her, but she could still paint a picture in her mind of her world. She could still make assumptions, true or false. She could still long for something better. All of these things she could do, just like you and me.
The clearness of our vision is based on our perspective. If we can only see part of the picture, we will not have a good idea of what the picture says. There is an old Far East Indian folk tail of six blind men who see an elephant. Of course since they are blind, they do not see with their eyes, but rather with their hands. One of the six touched the elephant’s leg. Because of this he thought that an elephant was tall and round like a pillar. The second man felt the tail. He felt that what he was holding was long and flexible like a rope. The third man felt the trunk. He assumed that the elephant was like a branch of a tree. The fourth man felt the elephants enormous ear. He assumed that the ear must be like a fan. Feeling the tusks, the fifth man assumed that an elephant is like a solid pipe. The six man, feeling the belly, assumed that an elephant is like a wall. All these men were right: an elephant is like all these things, but all these things are only portions of an elephant.
Several religions have taken examples like this story to far and have said that since there are many truths as to what an elephant is like, there are also many truths in life so we should accept that others have a different belief system than us. The problem with that is that when the men felt the different parts of the elephant, the parts didn’t contradict each other; they were just many different parts of the same item. However some people believe that beliefs that contradict each other can both be true. This can never be. Water cannot be both hot and cold. A room cannot be both light and dark.
Just like not seeing the whole picture, another thing that will deter our vision is preconceived ideas. Preconceived ideas are not all bad by any means. Some preconceived ideas can speed our process of seeing the picture. If we start fixing the car knowing what sound we heard before the car broke down, we can find and fix the problem faster. Other preconceived ideas can deter us from seeing the picture. Most of us have probably had experiences when we either misjudged others or were misjudged ourselves. We see a man with grubby clothes and we assume he’s poor. That may not be the case. There are a multitude of reasons someone could be wearing grubby clothes, but our brains have bee programmed to believe that grubby clothes are a sign of poorness. We have been talking a lot about preconceived ideas in my art class. When we draw an apple do we draw a perfect little circle with the stem sticking out and the one little leaf? Or do we include the chunk bitten out, the way it’s a little crooked, and the two leaves? The idea in art class has been to get away from preconceived ideas about what an apple should look like, and draw what’s really there. Just like in drawing, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but should examine the facts of what is really there.
Why is it we like the perfect little apple without the teeth marks and bruises? It’s because we long for a perfect world. We long for the fairy land world where no one tells lies, no one gets hurt, and everything goes the way we planned. Can we look to any place on earth where that is happening? No we can’t. Not even the rich have a fairy land world. The rich are never satisfied, they always want more. As the MasterCard commercial says, “there are some things money can’t buy.” One of those things is the perfect world.
Sometimes what jumbles our vision is not seeing only part of the picture or even having preconceived ideas about the picture, but rather an outright refusal to believe or take in what we see. As a person who enjoys photography, I have had many situations when I have seen “the perfect shot,” gotten out my camera, gotten ready to set up the picture only to realize there was a humongous tree in the centre of my view. Had the tree not been there before? Of course it had been there, but I had refused to accept its existence. Had my eyes literally passed over the tree? Of course not. This reminds me of how Erin McGraw in her essay Bad Eyes shares how she married someone only to have the marriage go south. She tells how even before the marriage, she took little pleasure in being around her fiancé. Her friends tried to point this out to her, but she refused to listen. The result was a failed marriage.
Sometimes we refuse to see things because we have become immune to them. We have been desensitized. When we see in the news that Britney Spears had yet another breakup, do we get shocked that this woman could take relationship so nonchalantly, or do we just brush it off as another crazy celebrity? When we see pictures of a horrible crime on the late night news, do we think about how terrible it is, or just brush it off as another news item? The more we are confronted with evil, the more immune we become to it. Recently our family watched the 1963 classic horror film, “The Birds.” Now I have not watched many horror films at all, but this classic seamed tame compared to the bits and pieces of the modern day horror films I have seen.
Not only can we become desensitized to evil, but we can also become desensitized to change. When we see a tragedy on the news, we want to help. When we saw footage of the devastation in New Orleans, many people wanted to help. But as time wore on, and stations began playing the same footage over and over again, people became desensitized. No longer was this a tragedy, it was now a news story.
Why do we become desensitized? Why do we just accept? Because we have lost a grasp of the picture. We feel that our dream of a perfect society can never come about. And indeed there will never be a perfect society on this earth, human kind is too wicked for that, but there can be change. Unfortunately we allow other things to influence us and tell us that the way things are is the way things are. If children are dying from aids in Africa that’s just the way it is. If we have a problem with an addiction that’s just the way it is. When we allow things to influence us like this, we put on their glasses of seeing the world and abandon our own eyes. We shouldn’t see our world just the way others see it, but with our own eyes. With our own dreams. With our own goals.
At what point do we see the entire picture clearly? At no point on this earth can we see the entire picture. We can never understand why everything in this world happens the way it does. When we live life, it’s like we’re standing right in front of a picture the size of a football field. There is no way we can see the whole picture. Only once we have died will everything be revealed. But here on earth we have a tool that enables us to see the big picture. That tool is the Bible. It acts as a mirror showing us the picture of life. However even with this mirror, everything is not revealed. We still don’t know why God allows bad things to happen to good people. Or many other mysterious things about God, but the bible does give us insight for life on earth.