This morning an enormous full moon hung overhead as I left the house. I tried to get a good picture of it, which is to say a picture that looked like what I was seeing. This proved quite difficult. The camera “wasn’t seeing it right” – or at least it wasn’t capturing my perspective well, at all. Funny thing is, the camera only sees what’s there. It’s my perspective that’s giving me the beautiful view I’ve got. My brain changes what I see, providing undetected foreshortening, changing the scale based on what seems important to a human primate, things like that. I see a fantastically luminous full moon, very large overhead. The camera shows me what was actually there. I think this is worth thinking about. We create a lot of our experience and what we see and understand about the world. Our perspective may not reliably reflect what reality actually presents.

… Perspective is very personal. We’re each having our own experience…

So, I find myself thinking about the lens through which I view the world. It’s probably worth thinking about.

In the darkness, a man approaches my parked car unexpectedly. This is a first at this trailhead. He appears to be wearing jeans and a T-shirt, which seems strange for the chill of the morning. He begins asking, breathlessly, if I would give him a ride home, and says he’s run six miles, which also seems very strange – running at this hour? Along the highway? I firmly reject the request without opening my window and direct his attention to a nearby bus stop. I double check that my car door is locked, though I know it is. The lens through which I view the world tells me this individual is more likely to be dangerous than not.

Daybreak comes soon, but I’ve become reluctant to walk the trail in the early morning twilight. I examine the feeling more closely, as one might examine a watch under a jeweler’s loupe. Am I overreacting? Being ridiculous? Responding to a non-existent threat? Relying too heavily on past experiences with dangerous strangers? Perhaps, perhaps not. Sometimes we only get one chance to be wrong about something like that.

I sit with my thoughts awhile. I think, too, of my Traveling Partner, and the way our experiences with other lovers, in other relationships, informs our responses to each other in some moment of stress or conflict. We’re each having our own experience. Always have been, whether the experience is shared or not. We see the world through a different lens. Our perspective is our own. Even taking a much closer look may not reveal additional commonality so much as blow up our fears or doubts way beyond what they deserve… but it’s quite difficult to remain aware of it in the moment.

I see the silhouette of the stranger in the darkness, lingering between the nearby bus stop and the trailhead parking lot. Why? I feel grateful for the techniques I learned for seeing things in the darkness that I learned as a soldier. So many things I have learned in a lifetime have had lasting utility. Unable to ascertain the stranger’s intentions and uncomfortable with his proximity, I move the car into the more distant parking lot as soon as the gate opens. I wait for daylight. I wait for the sunrise. I wait for a different perspective and more information. It’s nothing personal or even directly to do with that stranger; I’m choosing to silence the alarm bells clanging away along my nerves by reducing the potential threat. Feels like the safer choice.

Strange morning. Nothing really wrong, exactly. Good morning to think about perspective and the lenses through which we view the world. How accurate are those, really? I suppose only as accurate as our experiences hone and polish them to be. Probably not very accurate at all – how could they be, if we’re each having our own experience?

I think about conversations with my Traveling Partner yesterday. Some of those went incredibly poorly. Some were contentious, others loving. There were numerous miscommunications and misunderstandings. We don’t reliably see the world (or our shared experience) through the same lens. We’re different people, having our own experience, lived through our own perspective. It’s complicated by my brain damage. It’s complicated by the medication he’s presently on. It’s complicated simply because being human can be so complicated all by itself.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. Today is a new day.  I am fortunate to love so deeply and to be loved deeply in return. I have an opportunity to do better, to be kinder, to listen more deeply and to practice non-attachment. Perspective does matter, and so does giving people the freedom to have their own (and to have that respected). Another breath. Daylight comes. There’s no sign of the stranger who approached me in the darkness earlier. I feel a sense of relief.

It’s time to begin again.