i was distracted when d brought the camera back to me. working on something, i glanced up and thanked him. a few moments later, i asked him how the painting he was working on was going. “i scrubbed it,” he said. “what?!” i replied. “i started something else,” he said. when he left the room, i looked at the camera. this is what i found. an extraordinary look at earth, removed from earth, from a distance away. fragmented mother planet through the haze, i found it to be a striking – and yet abstract – image, with rich, almost-metallic hues. how does he do that?
this is EARTH INTERRUPTED V: FROM A DISTANCE. we need this perspective every now and then. we lose sight. we fall prey to overwhelm in our own stuff. we are but a speck of a fragment on this earth. we are both tiny and vast. and we are capable of doing both tiny and vast things to help our earth and each other.
try to see what they see. i glanced back over what i’ve written the last week: about trying to see eye to eye, about assuming awe, about being relentless in a life that isn’t simply black and white, about being brave. is it possible to write too many words about the importance of empathy? the importance of trying to walk in another’s shoes to really understand their circumstance, their joy, their plight, their challenge? because it’s easy to forget, i never feel like i can be reminded enough; it’s always hard to remember my perspective is different than any-other-person’s-on-earth. sometimes it’s laden with stuff. it’s all so complicated.
when dogdog was little we were astounded by his exuberant joy. he was always bounding, seemingly ever hopeful. he still is. i’ve written about what his take on the world looks like to us; i’ve written about what babycat’s take on the world looks like to us. they look forward and see possibility, without the capacity to mull all the looking-backwards-stuff over in their brains.
we surround ourselves with wonderful pets who unconditionally love us. all of us who have dogs or cats -or any pet- we adore know this; people who dedicate time or their lives to keeping animals safe – like aly, a veterinarian, or jen, who has spent lots of time volunteering at humane societies and sanctuaries, or my sister, who just adopted a puppy-she-wasn’t-expecting…we all know this. they see us like no one else. and they are part of us in ways not easy to express in words. they aren’t looking at us with prejudice or judgement, emotional baggage or elitist measurements of value. they simply expect the best and somehow they find it in the very next moment. they find it in each moment. they clearly know something we don’t know. they don’t need to walk in another’s shoes. they just look forward and trust. it’s simple for them.
for us? we can stand to be in those other shoes AND to look forward. we can try to see what they see.
i hardly know where to start. eye to eye. i to i. dang.
it’s easy to look at this and think of my own daily-life-eye-to-eye challenges. but – i can’t look at this cartoon and stay away from the political climate in our country. whether you prefer blue or red – or even purple – you have to admit, we are not in a state of blissful co-existing. we have moved in together and have drawn lines down the middle of the virtual apartment, down the middle of the ever-increasingly important issues, down the middle of integrity, down the middle of people’s hearts. and, with such strong big-thick-font-lines drawn, there seems to be no meeting ground, no where to go. the “eyes” of wisdom and for-the-good-of-all-people have disappeared and the “i’s” have shown up, stronger and bigger and more powerful than before; superman without clark kent’s goodness.
where DO we start? pstacey said the other day that we have to start in our own little corner of the world. i agree. how hard is it sometimes to see eye to eye/i to i in our own relationships, our own families? ptom’s words “acts of radical kindness = building community”. i agree. in the middle of our own concentric circles, we make a teeny movement of goodness and the ripple spreads out. there is no where else to start. without our grounding in the breath-space we each take up in the world, we can’t make any progress, we can’t ripple out.
perhaps we all could work on seeing eye to eye (er, i to i) if we made conscious and generous life-giving decisions with every choice-we-are-faced-with that take into account a weighing-in of how it might impact others. we don’t have to agree. but we have to respect each other in the process, try to walk in another’s shoes, see another perspective, see what someone else’s eyes see. see i to i.
yes! there are two different product lines – each easily accessible by clicking on the “eye to eye merchandise” link OR the “i to i merchandise” link above.
fragmented mother planet through the haze, i found it to be a striking – and yet abstract – image, with rich, almost-metallic hues. how does he do that?
reverse threading 