I do a lot of varied reading through out the days and weeks. I just finished a book by Dr. Cornel West entitled “The American Evasion of Philosophy” and started one by Slavoj Zizek entitled “The Sublime Object of Ideology”.

Not exactly easy reads, but they are part of my ongoing desire to wrap my head around the philosophical, cultural, societal, spiritual, etc. foundations that not only surround us today, but brought us here (Lest you think I’m buried in this stuff, I’m also reading/listening to other books – War & Peace, Limit by Frank Schätzing, a History of Spain, Theology of the Old Testament by Walter Brueggemann, The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, and a couple of others…..I like being able to switch gears as well as get exposed to the unpredictable ways all of these can shine different lights on each other).

As I read the early part of the book by Zizek, he mentioned a “progressive theorist of education” from the Sixties who published a study in which a group of children were asked to draw an image of themselves playing at home. A few years later, after some years in primary school, the same group of youngsters were asked to do it again. There was quite a difference. The early self-portraits were “exuberant, lively, full of colours, surrealistically playful…” The later portraits were much more subdued. Most of the group chose to use only regular pencils, although other colours and drawing pieces were available. Predictably, this experiment was taken “as proof of the ‘oppressiveness’ of the school apparatus, of how the drill and discipline of school squash children’s spontaneous creativity, and so on and so forth.” (Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, pg. ix)

While not entirely subscribing to this viewpoint, I began to think about the experience and perception of each of us, surrounding expectations regarding what we see, and a whole host of other influences, factors and limitations. I remember clearly, to my later shame, working with my kindergarten-age daughter to try and help her learn to color within the lines of work that she had from school. My goal was to try and help her be successful at school, without thinking about the joy of coloring outside the lines. She worked very hard to do this, which slowed her down considerably, thereby finding a different avenue from which to annoy her teacher (she later was told, in class, to just stop working at it so they could move onto the next thing on the classroom schedule…..She felt like such a failure…).

Visualize this process. Take this photo:

A younger child, asked to draw this, gives you something like this:

A few years later, upon being led into the world of “how a grown-up would do it”, the artist hands you this:

From the vantage point of someone about to turn 70, I meditated on this conclusion by the educational theorist, my experience as a parent and member of our society and culture and years of life folding like layers upon my awareness. If the photo, as regards this writing, represents what I ACTUALLY see, then the two drawings are not an either/or perception……they are both/and and beyond.

The first drawing has, perhaps, more vibrancy and colorful impressions of the reality. The second, however, isn’t ‘wrong’. It observes a more Platonic ‘essence’ of the subject, with clarity and precision that the first one misses (although, to be fair, ability and the difficulty of working crayons when in youngster “Woo-Hoo!” mode can make clarity, etc. harder to capture….).

So, there’s more there. It is NOT a matter of one being Right and other being Wrong. Not only are they both Right, but there’s even more there to see. Throughout your day, sit with the moment and try to restrain your own ‘monkey mind’ concerning the things you see. Just take the grace and time to see them, accept them, and realize that others may see different things about them than you do, which isn’t wrong. Taken together, you may both be “right” with more to see together.

I’m feeling that I want to see what I see more in light of the first drawing. The colour, the life, the vibrancy lead me to a mindfulness I don’t access any other way.