Seeing life through other’s eyes

Friday, December 4, 2020

I started writing this earlier in the year while spending a weekend in Hana, on the far east coast of Maui. My wife and I, and a couple of COVID free trusted friends rented a house. I arrived feeling nauseous after navigating the twists and turns of the Hana Highway, and so stayed behind to rest while everyone else went for a walk.

I sit watching a bug crawling across the top of the wooden balcony railing. It looks like a cockroach. A youngster if so. The ever moving feelers are my give away for cockroach identification, though I claim no expertise in the field.

I was reading, looked up and saw the bug scuttling across the railing, and I thought - I am living in my world view. Sitting here in this rented house in a remote part of Hawai’i, listening to the ocean crashing against the rocks not a 100 yards away, and this little bug is in its own world view, whatever that looks like - does it even know that the ocean is so close? What is, does it have a concept of the ocean? I am thinking and judging that its world view is much simpler than mine.

And I then stop myself and think about everyone’s, everything’s world view. All probably contain some truth. Then there is how we process and use our worldview. And maybe the greatest challenge, how do we share our worldview and opinions on it alongside everyones’ and everything else’s?

I’m not necessarily going anywhere with this train of thought right now. Just putting out there what a cockroach crawling across a balcony brought to my mind.