There is an old urban legend that Eskimos have an extrordinarily large vocabulary for types of snow. Apparently the myth is usually blown out of proportion, but in its essence there is some truth: The more important a particular subject is to us, the richer our vocabulary will become to describe it.

For example, my flatmate, Viktor Bijelovic is a classical pianist. With my delicate ears, I can distinguish “soft” and “loud”, and can describe music as “yup, sounds good” and “uhhhh…”. (Okay, so I am exaggerating.) Viktor, on the other is able to critique the music he plays and listens to on a much finer level.

It is not just that he has a richer vocabulary, but he has significantly more experience observing music and paying attention to it. From his experiences he has learned to notice differences that I simply have not yet learned exist. By paying more attention to what we are experiencing in the present moment, we open ourselves up to understanding our reality at a deeper level.

Categories: Beliefs
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Did you know that your eye is constantly processing what you see? What you think you see has already changed from what light has actually reached your eye. Here is an image I was sent in an e-mail a long time ago that demonstrates this:

• If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink.
• If you stare at the black + in the center, the moving dot turns to green.
• Now, concentrate on the black + in the center of the picture. After a short period of time, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating.

It’s amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don’t disappear. This should be proof enough that we don’t always see what we think we see.

Categories: Beliefs
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Much of learning to draw is about learning to see. One of the first things I learned when I started to draw with pencil were contour drawings. In a contour drawing, you take a large pad of paper, put your pencil down on the paper, and trace a complex object without looking at the paper. You trace the object with your eyes, and refrain from looking at your drawing until you are done. The purpose is not to create good art, but to train yourself to look at the fine details of what you are drawing, instead of the drawing itself.

It is important to remember that what we think we see is colored by our beliefs about how the world is. More often than not we are seeing from our memories of how we have experienced the world, not how the world is right now.

Categories: Beliefs
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Today I am going to see the world from a different perspective.

Ha ha. Just kidding. April fools.

I’ll save it for tomorrow.

Categories: Beliefs
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