“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

– Anais Nin

How is it that we see the world around us?  What criteria do we use to judge the people we meet?  How do we want others to see us?

The way we see the people and things that come our way each day depends upon us.  Although none of us would like to be called judgmental, we do make judgments about how the world works and about other people.  I suppose this is part of being human — part of the process of learning through experience and then applying what we have learned as we grow.  This often is not a bad thing.  I have a painful childhood memory of using logic to figure out whether my father had left for work or still was in his bedroom dressing for the day.  Every morning, as surely as the day would dawn, my mother scrambled two eggs for my dad’s breakfast.  She used the same pan on the same burner and quickly washed it and put it back in the cupboard.  I was pretty smart for a young child, because I concluded that if Dad wasn’t in the kitchen and the burner was warm it would mean that he already was on his way.  What I didn’t think of at such a tender age was the possibility that I could burn my hand on a hot stove burner.  I learned that day to consider all burners potentially dangerous unless I could prove that they were safe.

I have had many experiences with burners since that morning, but I suppose you could say that the original information I took in about them is seared into my memory.  Through other, less painful, experiences, I learned that I could replace my fear with respect.  This seems like a rather simplistic example, but i do think we can expand on it and see how our early learning — both through experience and through the input we receive from others — can color the way we view life.

I grew up in a small town where houses sat on enough land to warrant maintaining a lawn.  Although my own view of green includes more plants than just grass, I was taught very early on that dandelions were noxious weeds that would take over a yard if not controlled.  There was even a special tool designed with a tip that resembled the claw at the end of a crowbar set on a straight shaft, and it was meant to dig under the root of the dandelion and pop it out of the ground.  Problem solved.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that dandelion root is considered an herbal remedy that removes toxins from the kidneys and liver and promotes good digestion.  My ideas about dandelions were challenged when I learned this; and I needed to take another look at the way I see them.

And when I looked more closely, I discovered that they really are quite beautiful — it was my own prejudices and my limited knowledge of dandelions that defined them for me.  It certainly was worth another look.

We do the same kinds of things with people.  I remember a kindergarten bully with red hair.  Knowing her cause me to develop an aversion to redheads, which luckily had been resolved by the time I met my red-haired husband.  We are taught to fear people who are different from ourselves.  We see skin color or the way someone is dressed or how much they weigh or how many wrinkles the years have given them, and before we ever truly see who a person is, we’ve coated them in the assumptions we make out of our prejudice and limited knowledge of who they really are.  Are we really so insecure that we want to make everything and everybody fit into our own identity and mirror the qualities we see in ourselves?  Does it make us feel secure when someone else reflects back a mirror image of the person we believe ourselves to be?

When I look at the people I call friends, I can see that there are common interests, common views — common ground — that we share.  This is what encourages us to maintain our relationships beyond the first meeting and, hopefully, to take the time to dig deeper and discover what lies beneath our views and really defines who we are.  My dearest friends are those who challenge me to rethink my position or to take another look, from a new perspective, at the way I see the world.  They are the friends who love me not only for who they see today but for who I am becoming as I expand my own horizons.

This defines for me the way I would like to be seen.  I would like others to see my surface, because it gets their attention in the first place and makes them aware that I exist; but I would also like them to look more deeply at the person I am becoming.  This is the way I would like to strive to see others, too.  I want to look deep into their eyes and see who they are, separate from their skin or their weight or their age.  We make our world small by excluding people and things based on our limited learning and experience.  I want to greet my world with my eyes wide open and always looking to see just a little bit more than I saw the first time around.  When you look at me, try to leave your assumptions behind.  I want to begin each new day as though it were the first day I laid eyes on the amazing world that lies around me.  There is so much to see if we keep our eyes fresh and unfiltered by the things we assume to be true.