About 35 years ago, I was taking a painting class in high school.
The assignment was to paint using our oils and create a perspective that we felt needed expression. I remain as confused lo, these many years later, as I was that day.
To be sure, the actual painting of the project took more than a single day. It took several weeks for me to complete my vision, my view, my perspective.
Other more gifted artists in the room were a pleasure to watch. Their delicate and deft handling of the essential tools of painting helped them create canvasses of imagery that had most assuredly met the criteria of "perspective".
Comparison and contrast are part of classifying art. So I would compare my style to theirs (absent) and contrast my chosen subject to theirs (disaster) and realize that my life as an artist was destined to end at the close of the semester.
Though I passed the class and moved on to other attempts at creating art, I never forgot what our teacher, Mrs. Cox, told us one day.
"Your perspective is just like your fingerprint. No one has it but you."
I've found that to be true. We are individuals who sometimes come together for various purposes and to share our lives with one another but our perspective - our way of seeing the world - is truly an emotional fingerprint unique to us as individuals.
We can all look at the exact same thing. And under carefully constructed laboratory conditions, be granted the exact same spot and placement from which to view it. But our perspective - our personal take on the thing we see - will never be the exact same thing. Which is why it is imperative that we never tell someone that what they see doesn't matter, isn't good enough and is out of sync.
Children often paint wildly imaginative portraits of life as they see it. Slapdash appraisal of their work belittles their personal viewpoint and marginalizes their creativity. We can't appreciate their viewpoint if all we see is our own.
Maybe to them, in their finite understanding of the world, Mommy does indeed have 6 arms because to them the idea that she can tie a shoe, make sack lunches, talk on the phone, pour milk, zip a jacket and give a quick smooth down to someone's hair seems like they can't possibly be done all at one time. So Mommy MUST have 6 arms and that's how they draw it.
In our lives, we are blessed to have our personal perspective altered when someone shares a truth with us. The way we know it to be a truth is that it becomes an "aha!" moment that opens our eyes to a broader world and grants us a miracle of sight that we had been blind to only seconds before. That is a shift in perspective that tilts the axis of our own little world just a degree or two.
Most of the time, that shift or tilt is a good thing. Sometimes, it is a danger. Learning one from the other is a lifelong pursuit.
Some of those "aha!" moments are not meant to become our personal world view or our stated perspective. They are meant only as a doorway to understanding another human soul. We cannot possibly adopt every perspective and make them our own. To do so, I believe, would rend our own soul and shatter our psyche.
We must choose.
What scenes before our eyes are sometimes very individual. They are meant to be. Having a personal perspective and a view of this mortal experience is essential to our ability to gain traction and progress. We can't be all things to all people and still be an individual who is separate and distinct from all others. To attempt that creates a wishy-washy sort of image of a person with no real substance. It is as unsatisfying as eating a piece of wax fruit. Though it looks good from one perspective, from another it is a mouthful of nastiness that takes a long time from which to cleanse the palate and restore normalcy.
We grow and our perspective may change as we learn. Or we may cling to our perspective as surely as a frightened child holds to their treasured doll or teddy bear. Either way, we have a chosen perspective.
The important thing to remember is that in either case, there is both some beauty and truth to what is seen. We don't all grow and progress at the same rate. We weren't meant to, either. To make life a simple exercise in conformity is a waste of this mortal experience.
That's the reason I kept my paintings from high school. They are in a box of framed photos, artwork and other assorted keepsakes. I pull them out from time to time and look upon them as a gauge of my perspective.
One time, I was showing them to someone and felt quasi embarrassed at their quality. Now, I have come to realize it doesn't matter what someone else sees or what their perspective is regarding my skill set as an artist, the chosen material or subject or even my technique. They can choose to appreciate or denigrate all they see. But my perspective on what I created really doesn't have to change when I see it for what it really is.
The truth is that those paintings, amateurish as they may appear to the untrained eye, are really a self-portrait of my perspective as a skinny, eager, and wide-eyed youth from high school who was just trying to find my place in the world using the only tools at my disposal - my own perspective on what I was seeing, not only from outside in the greater world, but from within.
Perspective.
It's about what we see and also about what we don't.
