Heroes Not Zombies

I took this photo of the sea and sky – at the time I wasn’t that conscious of the shape of the window through which I was looking, but, somehow, in this image the window becomes a hugely present frame. I think it’s because I’ve exposed the camera for the outside so the dark interior has become even more black than I remember at the time.

Still, that difference brings something extra to this photo. I mean, I could have cropped it removing all the black, but then it would’ve been a completely different photo. Isn’t that interesting?

I think this makes something about perception and reality more obvious. Whatever we perceive is the end result of a process of selective attention. We exclude certain elements from our awareness, include others, and we bring a lot of our life so far to every single experience.

Iain McGilchrist makes it clear in his Master and His Emissary book that the two cerebral hemispheres engage with the world differently, and one of the most important aspects of that is the way in which they focus. Briefly, the left hemisphere uses a narrow focus, zoning in on particular elements, re-cognising them, labelling them and categorising them. The right hemisphere, on the other hand uses a broad focus, seeing the whole as it is, seeing the contexts, the environment and the connections. We use both hemispheres all the time, but we might give more weight to the activity of one over the other. There is an interesting interplay between both of these types of attention in this image, or, maybe better, this image evokes an interesting interplay between both these types of attention. We focus in on the sea and the sky, we notice the black frame, we see the whole image, we see the smooth ripples on the surface of the water and the suggestion of clouds above the horizon.

What do we bring to create our personal frame? Thoughts, memories, and imaginings…….stories, images and experiences. What is my emotional state before I start to look at this? Those emotions “colour” what I see. What memories and previous experiences does it evoke? Whatever they are, they will interact with my emotions, and, together they will influence what I see and how I experience that viewing. Does this scene spark my imagination? Does it stimulate my creativity? Does it influence my motivation, stir my desire?

These are questions we don’t tend to ask ourselves. Most of this goes on below the level of conscious awareness, but it goes on, all the same, and it’s powerful. We literally co-create the world we live in.