If you are seven feet tall, and I say, “You are tall,” it is pretty obvious that I am talking about the actual physical you. But if I say something like, “You are cranky,” then things get muddled. Are you indeed cranky? Or do I perceive crankiness where there is really something else? Or am I cranky and projecting my crankiness onto you? Or am I denying my own crankiness, but still projecting it? Confusing, yes?

Yo! Tiger! You look cranky. Or is it you? Or maybe you?

This confusion can cause trouble for both of us. The trouble for you when I use the word you comes when you don’t know which you I am talking about. The trouble for me comes when I don’t know either.

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Photo credit: Tom Huffman at Flickr

I assume that you see things as I do because it is convenient for me to do so. But maybe you don’t. For example, if you are color-blind, you certainly don’t see things the way I do. I won’t know that unless you tell me or unless our difference becomes obvious in some way. If you are color-blind, I will think that you see things differently than I do, but some will think that there is something wrong with you.

Now imagine that this is how I see things:

How might my life be different then? And imagine that I was the only one, or one of a just a few, who saw things that way. Would you think that there is something wrong with me because I see things differently than most people do? Would I think that there is something wrong with me? Would you think that there was something dangerous about me? Might I be dangerous?

I have learned a lot from people who see things differently than I do, but sometimes I think that those people are just a pain in the ass. And sometimes I think that they are dangerous; and sometimes they are.

Now imagine that the first picture is the way things truly are, and that the second is the way I see things, and that this is how you see things:

This is how it is. I see things the way I see things, and you see things the way you see things, but neither of us sees things the way that they truly are. That is fine, and it might even be great, unless one or both of us insists that the way we see things is the way they truly are.

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A small middle-aged woman wearing a white sleeveless shirt and khaki cargo pants appeared a few yards to my right. She raised a point-and-shoot camera to a foot or so in front of her face, aimed it at the mountain, snapped a photo, then retreated to her car and left. I did not know how long she had been in the picnic area and had no sense of whether she spent time absorbing the view or merely drove up, took her picture, and drove away. Her manner seemed perfunctory, so I suspected that the latter was the case.

My contribution to life on earth at present appears to involve making meaning of experience and sharing it, so my mind often buzzes with questions about mundane events such as those that occurred at the river. Questions such as these: What is this compulsion many of us have with recording our experience, with writing things down and taking pictures? At what point does the compulsion interfere with the experience so that the experience is truncated by thought or by some device such as a camera? What experience might be denied me while I am busy making meaning of the last experience? Why would anyone else care about how I make meaning of experience?

I have come to terms with that understanding of my contribution; I get that it is what I am supposed to do and that I am good at it. But there are times when I’d like to experience a river, a mountain, leaping trout, and a small woman with a point-and-shoot camera, without an urge to record them or to make of them anything else.
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