Something continues to brew for me around the chasm between what is really true and what we see as true. Even as I sit here overjoyed that Barack Obama won the presidential election, others are sitting oppositely dejected that McCain lost. Isn’t there some objective truth that would become apparent after such a lengthy campaign? Apparent for all to see? It sure felt so to me, but it also felt so to McCain backers. 47% of Americans voted for McCain. 47%! That’s a huge number of people who honestly felt that McCain was the better choice. That’s hard to reconcile for me. The difficulty comes because I have to admit that my perspective is really just that, just a perspective, just an opinion. There is no statement of fact, there is no objective truth, there is simply perspective, opinion. It sure seemed obvious though and I know I could justify why it seemed obvious, but it’s really just my opinion, and luckily for me (and in my opinion luckily for the world) 52% of voting Americans felt similarly.
Today was a particularly difficult day for me. Czarina and I officially separated. We’ve been separate for a couple of months now, but we’ve remained in close contact and blurred the line between being together and being separate. It’s strange to me, although becoming all too familiar, how two people can experience the same events and same history in two completely different ways. In a way too, our experience of the future was even different! I don’t want to talk too publicly about our private matters, but it’s really quite astounding to me how two people can communicate with each other with such self-perceived clarity and walk away from the experience with such different opinions of what had actually transpired. I’ve also learned much more clearly how I (we) form perspectives and judgments about another, and then start to read subsequent language, gestures and actions solely under the light of those preconceived perspectives and judgements. It’s really awful, since under that framwork we stop seeing every moment as new and instead see everything as we expect to see it rather than as it actually is.
What feels especially sad to me about this separation is that at this stage of my life I feel as I can communicate my way through any logjam in relationship until perhaps running into a complete incompatibility. Here it feels like we are separating based on “perspectives” rather than based on actual truth. The reasons may be true, but in my opinion we don’t know that, and are instead separating based on perspectives of truth. There of course is more to it than just that, but that is the stuff that really relates to the intent of this blog in general.
So here’s what ends up in my brain: Can we as people remain completely open to perspective? Must we insist on having a perspective? Must we see that perspective as true? The ego loves perspective. Without perspective, I don’ t know if it really has anything else to hold on to. I’m trying. I’m trying to learn to be truly open to all perspective, and certainly to learning over and over and over again that my perspective is not necessarily the correct one, and certainly not the only one. One perspective that is true however, is that I am sad tonight, and a little vacant. Our emotions are perhaps the only ground of truth, since they are completely true for us.