Perspective

How we look at something affects what we think about it. We don’t necessarily see truth without some effort; we need to determine if our perspective is correct.

As a quick exploration of this, I took these pictures:

They were posted on Instagram with the left one visible first with a description that said it looks “like a little green campfire of a plant reaching to the sky”.

The reality is that the plant was laying on the ground, and it was only the way the picture was taken and presented that made it look like it was standing up.

The picture on the right was also posted in order to show what the plant really looked like.

The point is that the way of looking at the plant on the left gave an incorrect impression. Sure, I intentionally arranged things so that would happen, but think about how much of what we see and hear is influenced by others, or even more tricky, our own minds playing tricks on us.

This seems like a good reminder to test our assumptions and biases when observing something. We need to understand what our perspective is and what might be affecting how we perceive something before we conclude that we really understand it.