The things that we see with our eyes

Clayton started individual lessons this summer with a professional artist who specializes in oil paintings and pastels. He works on one piece each week during lessons, and has been working on this one for the last few weeks. It’s taking longer than it usually takes him because the piece is pretty large, 19 inches by 25. Each week he takes photos at the end of each session and shows them to me.  And for the last two or three weeks, I’ve just been bothered by Aaron’s face in the painting. I know I’m driving Clayton crazy because I keep telling him there’s just something off.  I can’t tell him exactly what it is, but there’s just something off. He assures me that both his teacher and he think it is right, but that it’s not finished yet, and there is still more tweaking to do. I’m pretty sure he’s telling me that just to humor me. 

The rational side of my brain says that two artists think the piece is right, and they are far more likely to be right than I am with my uneducated opinion.  But still I have that feeling that something is just off.  Finally, yesterday, I paid close attention to the photo that Clayton is using as a reference photo.  And I realized that he’s right.  The painting looks just like the reference photo.  Just like it. But the photo itself looks a bit off.  Maybe it’s the fact that Aaron’s smile is bigger than is usual or that the sun was shining in his eyes a bit which made him squint a bit more than is typical.  But something about the photo itself is just off from the mental image that I have in my head of Aaron.

It struck me that it didn’t matter what I was seeing in front of my eyes, because the image I had in my head was what I was looking at.  Not what was right in front of me.  And it made me wonder how often that happens in my life with things other than just photos and art pieces.

How often does the image we have in our head color the image we see with our eyes?

How often do we focus on what we think reality is, based on our history, on our biases, on our insecurities, on our shame, instead of what is really right in front of us?

This is true of what we see, and also true of what we hear. I wrote in a blog post recently about how what I heard my pastor say to me at one point turned out to be different than what she had actually said to me, and what a difference that made in her message to me. That’s not the first time that has happened. On more than one occasion, I have heard very clearly one message on Sunday morning and then when I went back later in the week to re-listen to the message to work out some things that had bothered me, I discover that what was said wasn’t at all what I heard. The first time I heard the message, I heard it through my shame. The second time I heard it, I heard it as it was intended.

How often does the message we have in our head alter the message we hear with our ears?

How often do we focus on what we expect to hear, based on our history, on our biases, on our insecurities, on our shame, instead of what is really being said to us?

The TBRI training that I will be fortunate enough to participate in next month has come with a significant amount of pre-training homework over the past few weeks. I’ve learned a great deal already about attachment, and the effects of trauma, and the struggles faced from children coming from hard places. But the one concept that has impacted me the most is the concept of felt safety. Essentially what that means is that feeling safe is not so much about what you know as about what you feel. It’s a feeling that comes from your innermost being, regardless of what may actually exist around you. This is true for children with histories of abuse or neglect but I think it’s also true for all of us.

How often does the feeling we have in our gut alter the way we respond to things that happen to us? How often does that feeling actually change our reality?

How often do we react to things, actually feel things, based on what we expect our reality to be, based on our history, on our biases, on our insecurities, on our shame, on our trauma, instead of what is really happening around us?

I wonder what would happen if we were able to take an objective step back from the things we see, the things we hear, the things we experience. What would happen if we were able to view and hear and experience those things through the filter of reality instead of the filter of shame or fear or bias. Might we see and hear and experience the world, and the people in it, in a whole new way?