Perceptions (CW warning - wokeness alert)

 

This is not a 'great' photo, but I was going for accuracy of colour, not 'eye candy'.  To that end, I got pretty close.  The warp is Peacock and Bleu Moyen from Brassard, and the weft on the left is navy while the weft on the right is a kind of periwinkle blue.  The warp is the same for both, but the weft colour is shifting our perception of what we see.  And the camera interprets what it 'sees' which may or may not, reflect what my eye sees.

And so it is with Life.  Our perceptions can 'fool' us into seeing something that isn't accurate.  

As I get older, my lifetime of experiences has given me a certain perception of what has happened.  But I have to remember that all of my perceptions are filtered through my reality bubble.

What is that?  What seems 'normal' to me, may be vastly different to someone else, even as they experience the same event.

Or as they say, we are not all in the same boat, we are in the same storm.  Some of us may have a yacht, some of us may have a rickety boat, some of us may have a raft.  And not all of us may have a life jacket.

So that storm may look very different depending on where you are standing.  Or floating.

Every once in a while I get yanked out of my reality bubble by someone who has a different set of experiences forming *their* reality bubble.  Sometimes it is a gentle suggestion that I re-think my attitude.  Sometimes it is not-so-gentle.  

It is never comfortable to be reminded that others have different experiences, different realities, that make my life look very different from theirs.

It may be a desire to defend myself that I need to overcome, when the appropriate response is to be quiet, think before I speak, and open my heart and mind to hear what the other person is really saying.

I think the first time I really understood this was reading a book called Black Like Me.

It shook me to my core, to be honest.  In the small town I lived in there was, at the time I read it, exactly one black person living here.  But we had tv and I could see what was happening on the news - the whole desegregation struggles going on.  It became more 'personal' when I learned about the experience of black people in Canada.  We were not the shining light of equality I had been led to believe.  And then I learned about the Indian Act, and the way Europeans treated the indigenous peoples, up to and including the 'residential schools' that still existed, well into the 1990s. 

As a young adult I became aware of the work Brigette Moran was doing with First Nations people who lived in and around my town, and the vitriol of a segment of the population about her advocacy of rights for the people living under a cloud of racism.

As I read more, learned more (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, etc) I had to get over, through, around, my reality bubble that said such things did not exist.  I had to learn that just because they did not happen to me, didn't mean they didn't happen to others.

Then I saw a documentary about the Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes experiment by Jane Elliot.

As I learned more, I *saw* more.  I could no longer deny the attitudes I could see at play around me, even when they did not apply to me.

Living is a constant state of new experiences.  Learning more.  Changing attitudes.  And still getting tripped up by my reality bubble/perceptions - what is 'real' and what is just my perception of 'real'.

I have benefited from people who have called me out when I said something that was judgmental, biased, closed minded.  Those times have never been 'comfortable' as I had to stop, think, re-calculate and tear another layer off my reality bubble.  I have had to set my discomfort aside, swallow hard, and change my language, my attitude.  

We are all works in progress.  My hope is that I never become so set in my ways, my attitudes, that I cannot change my mind.  That I can continue to learn, to grow.

Weaving helps me with this journey because over and over again I learn - change one thing, and everything can change.  In the photo above, the weft yarn colour is the only thing that has changed.  Same warp.  Same density.  Same design.  Different weft colours.  Two different towels.  Neither is 'better' than the other.  

"Do the best you can until you know better.  When you know better, do better."  Maya Angelou

In weaving as in life.  Do the best you can.  But keep an open mind so that when you know better, you can do better.