The Beginning - Perception and Our World of Words

“If  you want to know the end, look at the beginning”

African Proverb

I’ve been thinking for a while that I need to make this trip and I hope you’ll join me, it’s fun to explore together.  It will be a journey that takes us on highways and back roads in all kinds of weather towards an uncertain destination, called Design. I am not sure how to get there but that's a good thing as it allows a lot of leeway. It might be difficult at times and we might get stuck or lost, on the other hand there will be a lot of progress made when we have clear sailing, clear vision and clear thinking. So pack your bags, buckle your seat belts, lets get this show on the road to see what we can discover on this journey.

As we begin it occurs to me that I can only see part of the road and I wonder how limited my vision really is......

“It is sure to be dark if you shut your eyes.”

  Martin Tupper (1810 - 1889)

When we are small and before we could speak everything we saw was a miracle where shapes, colors and textures all were amazing to us. I can remember my son was so excited by a bird in our back yard as it jumped around. He was waving his arms and pointing, smiling and laughing as the bird kept pecking at the ground and finally flew off. He learned words and soon all the objects he saw would be labeled and  

put in a category. The bird was now a “Bluebird” or “Robin” and no longer exciting or even interesting, that's when he stopped seeing.

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”                     Anais Nin

Words are positive.
Words are the way we organize the world in which we live, we couldn’t communicate without them, I could not be sharing these ideas, none of us could exchange thoughts, feelings and opinions without words. If we didn’t have language we would not be able to do all the things that are essential to a civilized people. Without words there would be no phone calls, no newspaper, no computer and no thinking....... think about not thinking.

Words are also negative. 

Letters are abstract shapes that we put together and to call words. 

As we grew we become influenced by our parents, teachers, peers and were trained to label all the objects we could see and soon found we could put those labels into categories. What were once exciting shapes with colors and textures are now words.

We have taken every shape in our universe and have replaced it with a word, put that word in a mental box and then formed an opinion about it. One of the dangers of this process is that it becomes our reality and this is when our ability to see stops. We look to classify, to label, to navigate, to categorize and judge, all inhibit our ability to see.
We have become lost in a world of words and our reality is now abstract symbols that we made up, we have become blind to the amazing visual world that actually exists around us. 

We no longer “see”, we “look”.

“The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.”

Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)

Seeing the way we once did as little children, with clarity, excitement and fascination, is going to take desire, persistence and determination.  It requires seeing with a beginners mind and letting go of the words, not an easy task but well worth the practice. This is necessary for anyone involved in design.

It does take a long time to become young and see with new eyes.

"Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing."

Bill Cosby (1937 - ____) 

You  might want to check the map and see if there might be a quicker way to get to Design but I am guessing there are no short cuts. I think we’ll just let the road take us where it may, at least for a little while..........

"The artist should be a seeing-eye dog for a myopic civilization."

 Jacob Getlar Smith