A passing thought, a reference...

[Town Heretic]

The following was brought on by my perusal of a bit by Sax in his blog. You should stop in and read him if you haven't. Interesting fellow.


Last night I was at my father's house and the four of us (my wife and my mother included) were having a conversation about life when it occurred to me that I wasn't really seeing my father. That is, I was seeing my father, but not the man. I concentrated my attention, pulled it away from my chosen perception and there he was...older than I thought, but more vital for that...it was pleasantly jarring. And I wondered later, sitting on the porch under a brilliant night sky, how many things are distorted through the filters I choose to use to view them?

It's a question worth asking, I think.

 

[Imagine]

I think about things like that a lot. It's sometime hard to view others as a person and the way Jesus would view them, especially when it is mom or dad or someone close like that. It's as though we see them for their role in our life and not the human being God created.

 

[MrRadish]

A lot of life's like that. An awful lot. In fact, you know what I was saying about Perspectivism? Well...

To quote the wise ol' philosopher Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on your point of view". We can only perceive the universe, we can't know it, for we all live in our own little cocoon of illusion and phantasm and that, to each one of us, is what the Universe IS. We create reality.

 

[hoipoloi]

It seems to me that most of the 'lenses' to which you refer are emotionally generated and perpetuated. I'm not sure I'd want to live without them, but it can be surprising to look at your Grandfather as someone else's and see how much smaller he looks in their eyes. But I almost want to say (or maybe I just want to believe) that the emotional lenses we use actually help us to see those we love more clearly. We see not only what the stranger sees, but what we know to be behind the edifice. Perhaps those lenses are magnifying glasses and are part of what makes us feel 'attached' when all need for actual attachment has faded.

 

[zippy2006]

Interesting. You can read about things like that all you want, but to actually go through it is something different entirely. I feel like no matter how many successes we have, books we read, or realizations we come to, this kind of constant grounding is always a very vital part of life.

 

[PureX]

I am currently living with my dad since his wife died. He's in good health but his mind is beginning to fail him. He can't remember things, gets easily confused, and repeats stories over and over.

It's somewhat disconcerting to see him this way after thinking of him as being so strong and effective for my whole life. And it serves to remind me, often, about how we experience life in cycles. I am only 54, but I already know very well that getting older is a process of repeated losses. We lose friends. We lose our youth. we lose our health. We lose our mental abilities. We lose our parents. We lose our jobs. And eventually we will lose our lives.

This process of loss readies us, I think for our own loss of the self. It numbs us by repetition. I suppose the if I were not living here, and taking care of someone who is further along the road than myself, I wouldn't be thinking of these things. Maybe that ignorance would be bliss, but maybe not. Since I got sober 20 years ago, I have found that reality is better on it's worst day than delusions are on their best.

 

[Arsenios]

Your "seeing" of your father as a person
(and not a 'father-role')
is a good beginning part
of what I like to call the "Reality Quest"
that is Christianity...

Nice work...

Arsenios