Double vision
We walk this path thinking we see or understand the same because everything that happens to us simultaneously should feel the same, yet it does not happen that way.
It is funny how we tend to assume that things will be clear because we experience them at the same time.
I see with your eyes, I feel what you hear, I react with your gut… but in the best of the circumstances perhaps we did see something similar, only if we were looking at the same thing from the same angle. The rest can only be compare, since we do not even listen the same way when we hear the same sounds, and we will only react the way we have learned through our previous experiences, so, your reaction and mine could only possibly be similar if we shared similar values.
I recently read a blog by a stranger that was trying to understand the depression of her teenager. What this young people have to endure nowadays thanks to the advances of our technology. This reminded me those many times I have felt completely out of touch with the reality of my own children.
Sometimes, while I practice my yoga, I see those beautiful poses that other yogis around me can accomplish and I hear my teacher reminding us to be forgiving to our selfs, to stop fighting our desire to look around and just focus in ourselves. It is not about the pose, is about the effort, the personal growth. So I wonder what did they all look? What did they feel? What happened when we all reshaped our brains as we took a breath and exhale to comeback to a standing pose? Did they feel like me? Were they also struggling to balance, where they struggling as much as I was to maintain their legs and arms in the high place we were told, did they all made a conscious effort to engage all their muscles? Did they all listen our teacher voice and remember that it is a personal journey, not about the pose itself, but the effort into conquering ourselves.
I know we can never remember the same event the same way, I know.
Your eyes will remember what they focused on, your feelings would have that memory of your reactions to the stimuli that surrounded you. Your perspective may be different and your understanding of the event will also be determine by your prior experiences. Our memories of our shared moments will differ because we will always have that double vision. We can talk about it and even we can try to clarify our perspective, but we cannot change what we initially felt. It is imprinted in our memory. All we can do is to try to do the mirroring exercise and listen to the other and his or hers experience, and only then, may our double vision could make the image tridimensional. Perhaps then we could have an stereoscopic image of our simultaneously shared events.
But even then we will still have our double vision, and that is ok.
