Lens of Perception

I look out to the islands of Fourni. I notice that  some days or hours of the days the islands are present and close, their rough contours plain to see. The dry ruggedness of the land, mostly Inhabitation, harsh, severe, dirt. Other times the islands are softened but still visible in a clear light; jetting facades look like giant chocolate chips, playful in their brown spectacled mountain landscapes. This morning the islands float two, not three, dimensional, behind a haze like soft fluffy clouds floating on the sea. 

I look with the same eyes to the island mountains. But with the different lenses that nature gives me to show me that nothing is just ever one and the same. Heraclitus said thousands of years ago that everything changes and nothing stands still.

We are given not just lenses from nature, but internal lenses of perception. We examine others from changing conditions within us - often emotional ones. Fear. Anger. Desire. Jealousy. I try to be aware of those lenses and funnel them instead into one of my favorites: curiosity. When we cast a light of curiosity to another person - this can be a very generous and positive lens.

We can look at an old person slowly walking along a beach with a limp and see not decay and past life, but mysteries of great stories hidden inside a precious seashell. What storms or struggles did she have to survive to get to this shore? How was a child transformed into this man now? What can I learn from her trembling fingers? How can I give something to make that person feel even more alive today? 

And do I want him or her to remain like a dreamy haze to me walking along the horizon - or reach out with a playful splash of a hello. Or, am I going to keep an anonymous distance and look with rugged and severe eyes toward a limping man?

The same goes the other way. How do others view us? We are not even the same person to each and every single person we meet...or that we exchange a sideward glance with. Can we do anything to filter or clarify all the altering lights falling upon ourselves?  What do we inadvertently absorb? What do we consciously reflect?

View of Fourni Island from Ikaria, Greece