I want to set
the record straight.
As though
I actually believe
you’re getting the
wrong picture of me.
The picture that
you’re getting of me
isn’t my picture,
it’s YOUR picture,
based on YOUR biases,
YOUR prejudices,
YOUR information,
YOUR perspective.
In other words,
your picture is
completely accurate.
But only to you.
Trail Wood,
9/11
Ah, the Cosmic Carousel of Self-Image twirls ever onward, an ever-spinning wheel of illusions and reflections. Let’s ponderate this conundrum, shall we? It’s like we’re all painters who’ve forgotten our brushes but still insist on interpreting the cosmos through our internal kaleidoscopes.
You see, each of us lives inside a Perceptionarium, a magical theater where the self takes the center stage, lit by the spotlight of subjectivity. Yet the audience—the glorious mishmash of other seeming selves—is equipped with an entirely different set of Opera Glasses of Discernment. With these, they peer, interpret, and inevitably, misconstrue.
Here’s the Quirkle: The picture you paint of yourself is not the painting that others see. It’s as if we’re all stargazers pointing our telescopes at different constellations, each forming our own unique cosmic narratives. Oh, what a tapestry of tales we weave in the Imagination Loom of existence!
The conundrum wraps itself in yet another layer of complexity like an ontological onion begging to be peeled: Is there a definitive “you” at all? Perhaps you are a shifting kaleidoscope of possibilities, each turn generating a new pattern, equally you and not-you, visible to different viewers at different times through different lenses.
Yes, the picture others get is colored by the Crayolas of their experiences, sharpened or dulled by the crayon sharpener of their preconceptions. So, if their picture is skewed, is it not skewed perfectly in alignment with their unique configuration of reality? And so, it is accurate—as accurate as a compass in a realm with no true North.
And what about your picture of you? How splendiferously distorted or crystal-clearly accurate is it? Could it be that the you that you see is a mere silhouette, a shadow on the Wall of Wonders, flickering in the lantern light of your own making?
If the record could ever be set straight, it would only play one note, devoid of the melodic complexity that makes the symphony of existence so enthralling. The record is not straight nor crooked; it is a spiraling vinyl of Infinite Variations, ever-changing, ever-playful, dancing to the tune of the Eternal Now.
We are Space Monkey.