FILTERING THE TRUTH

I have long been familiar with the phrase We don’t see the world as it is, but as we are.

In any given situation, be it an argument, a car accident, the witnessing of a crime or whatever, those present will all report their observations from their point of view, resulting in a diverse presentation of events, what happened when, who did what and who was to blame. Piecing together the various components to arrive at a clear picture of actual events is often a complicated process, something which keeps our legal and justice systems thriving, and even then not necessarily arriving at the truth.

We can be convinced that what we see or believe is the truth, and find it difficult that what someone else sees or believes could also be true. Admitting to that puts us in the vulnerable position of having to accede that there may be more to the picture than our own perception of the truth. That can be pretty threatening for some, resulting in family, workplace, racial, and religious tensions just to name a few.

So is it even possible to see in such a way that we can recognise we are looking at the world through the filters of our upbringing, our home life whether it be nurturing or dysfunctional, our education or lack of it, our job fulfillment or lack of skills and employment opportunities, our ethnic background, our economic status, our moral or faith basis or lack of spiritual nourishment, our concern for the world beyond ourselves or the assumption that we the individual are of prime importance.

Have just finished Tracey Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, a fictionalised account of the creation of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer’s famous painting of the same name. From a Protestant family, Griet, the subject of the painting, feels uncomfortable in her new position as maid in the Vermeer household in the town’s Catholic sector. The visible signs of Catholic life unnerve her, as do religious paintings, but as her relationship with the artist grows she feels bold enough to ask him about the ‘Catholic’ paintings in churches and his response is not one she was expecting.

It’s not the painting that is Catholic or Protestant, but the people who look at it, and what they expect to see. A painting in a church is like a candle in a dark room – we use it to see better. It is the bridge between ourselves and God. But it is not a Protestant candle or a Catholic candle. It is simply a candle.

I can sit on the edge of the village here looking down into the valley below, watching the valley floor gradually reveal itself as the morning fog lifts, while the person beside me concentrates on the reflection of the sun on snow covered Ben Lomond in the distance, another notices the amount of dead branches and stripped bark littering the area after the recent storm, and another wishes we could remove a few scruffy wattles to improve the view.

We will always see things a little differently, and giving each other the space to do that without judgment will go a long way towards acceptance. The truth is out there, but there just may be more than one way to illuminate the path to get there.