Fact or fiction
I’m quite interested in art at the moment, and I often join in when a tour is held at the art gallery in town. In fact, I love it so much that I’m quite sold on being one of the tour guide volunteers at one point in my life.
Not everyone is necessarily as enthusiastic about art, but most people have glanced at a painting at one point or another. Perhaps you’ve noticed the colours, or the form giving depth, or the texture of the paint and strokes.
Interestingly, two different people who stare at a painting at exactly the same time naturally interpret its meaning quite differently. But why?
It’s true that our biology, upbringing and biases shape how we see and experience everything we come across to the point that nothing in life holds an absolute, objective meaning.
Our reality can be seen as a personal construct. We experience it through a subjective lens – a truth quite effectively illustrated by writers of fiction. If characters didn’t see or interpret the world in fascinating ways, would novels exist at all?
Fictional characters (not unlike regular people) have sensory, psychological and cultural filters that alter facts into personal experiences.
In real life it raises the question – what can actually be considered factual? Especially since there are typically two (or more) sides to the coin.
We could probably discuss this at length and inevitably come to completely different conclusions individually, right?
As I write this blog post (while sitting at the hairdresser of all places) I realise that choosing to spend hours here on a Saturday chews up so much of one’s weekend and yet so many people do just that. Incidentally, this is also why there’s generally a six-week gap between my blog posts!
But at the same time, I’m also reminded of shift workers for instance, and those who don’t necessarily have two days off in a row and I’m immediately thankful to be able to call it a ‘weekend’.
This is our challenge – may we always seek ways to look at things through a different lens.
Our realities depend on it.