Ways of Seeing

Following from my previous posts regarding perception and ways of seeing, I thought I'd share these words, slightly paraphrased. I stumbled upon them after a gorgeously beautiful breakfast at Bondi, with five of my gorgeously beautiful friends, and a gorgeously beautiful dog - Eva.

They are poignant words.

Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognises before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it nor can words be sufficient to explain it.

This presents humanity's unnerving tension; in settling the relation between 'what we see' and 'what we know'.

Or as Giz once delicately put it:

"the frustration between what I know to be true on the inside and what I perceive to be real on the outside".

Or as Matthew 13:13-15 plainly suggests:

..."Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: 'You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving'. For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts..."