See for yourself
The shortest-ever route to finding joy
It had been a bumpy month, a worse few days, and I was in no mood to be uplifted. On the contrary, I was deep into the exercise of allowing myself to feel my feelings without self-imposed limits. I think the clinical term for this is a pity party. The realistic optimist in me knew it would all run its course, eventually. But, for the time being, I was blue.
On the bathroom counter, I set down my cup of green tea with cream (yes, cream…I ended my unfulfilling relationship with half and half years ago) and took stock of my exhausted face in the mirror. Small wonder, after pulling four all-nighters in two weeks’ time. Maybe a little make-up. But first, another sip of tea.
And, there they were, two hearts - a big one and a little one - floating next to each other on the surface. Certainly not barista quality designs, they were uneven and lumpy, but hearts nonetheless. I studied them for a minute and snapped a photo. The walk back to the kitchen destroyed my ephemeral heart-art, so I showed my husband the picture.
“Look what just happened,” I said. “Isn’t that sweet?”
“We see what we want to see,” he replied, a little distracted.
That was it, the sum-total of our exchange. But, something shifted. Without meaning to, he’d told me what I most needed to hear.
We see what we want to see. I saw a reason to smile.
~Elizabeth
I'm under the influence of Carlo Rovelli, a renown physicist and author of The Order of Time and Helgoland wherein he tries to explain quantum physics. He would agree with "you see what you want to see," literally, I think. It seems the brain manages what we see, and the eye is simply a vector from which the brain receives information that it already knows or doesn't and creates a feedback loop into the flow of molecules already buzzing in and around us which produces a story that we assemble from biology and space into tell ourselves. [Check me out, Carlo, but I think that's what I understood from your books and Eliazabeth's experience...which seems to confirm your analysis...and Jim's.
Yay Jim.... I think for the most part Jim is correct. We see what we want to see....but....maybe with the slightest of word modifications..we see what we "need" to see.....