Reality Mine: Photographs and Memories

I've started a new blog dedicated completely to showing my perception of reality through the photographs I take. By definition (and by the title of this blog), I cannot post those pictures here albeit they would be an integral part of some of the thoughts that float through my mind from time to time. Due to such, I have created this blog: Magically Beautiful (<-- click on the name to check it out).

Do visit it some time when you feel like it.

Reality Mine: First Chapter

I asked my brother about this picture just a few moments ago. Yes, I have a brother. For that matter, I have 3 brothers: one older brother and two younger brothers. But, enough about that. As I was saying, I asked my younger brother about this picture some time ago. 

The conversation went this way:

me: This is a picture of what?

brother: Sunrise.

me: From where?

brother: Eh... I dunno. Africa?

Interesting thought. You see, I did not rip this picture off the web. This is not a picture of a sunrise at Africa. After all, I was the one who took this picture and I've never been to Africa. Although, I do plan to go there some time in the future; mostly likely as a member of an NGO like Red Cross. 

I took this picture last October 24, 2010 from my parents' bedroom window. It was not taken in Africa. It was not taken in some exotic jungle or whatnot. No. It was a picture I took from my home in the Philippines. Early that morning as the sun began to rise, I decided I would go get my mother's CANON Power Shot A480 and take a picture of the sunrise. What came out was this beautiful picture you now see here. And I find it to be one of the most fascinating pictures I've taken yet. 

However, this is not just a picture. This is a part of my reality. My reality of the world can be summed up into three categories: magically beautiful, unavoidably violent, and extremely confounding.

This is the first chapter, and here I wish to bring to your eyes the part of my reality that I perceive to be magically beautiful. It may not be as wonderful or enchanting to you as it is to me. After all, how we perceive reality differs. However, I will not allow that to stop me from trying to show you just how beautiful reality, life, existence can be.

I Cannot Know Your Reality

Often I have found myself thinking, contemplating about reality. Or, at the least, what it is that I perceive as reality. Am I really here? Is this real? Is what I'm touching now real? What is this that I am seeing, hearing, tasting, sensing now? What is the real? Is what I am perceiving real? Do people sense and process the world around them the same way as I do? Is what I perceive as reality also the same reality that other people sense?

More than once I try to answer these questions. More than once, I find myself at a dead end. After all, I am myself. I can never be anyone else other than myself. And, in that sense, I can never truly know how other people perceive the world. I cannot feel what they feel when they touch something. I cannot sense what they sense when they smell something. I cannot see what they see when they are looking at something. Even when I ask them how something feels or tastes or seems, my brain still has to process their answers. What they want to say through the words they speak may not be interpreted correctly, in accordance to them, by my brain. Additionally, what I am getting is secondhand information. When my brain has to interpret an answer, I have to imagine what that answer means drawing clues from my own bank of experiences and knowledge. My imagination could easily be 100% off tangent.

Evidently, the reality that the other perceives can never truly be known to me. I will never know if the reality I perceive is the reality that others perceive. People may say that it should be the same because one can read it in a book the same way. But how one processes the information in the book may be different from how another will process it. I say "may" because I cannot truly know. There is a similarity in how we may think, see, taste, hear, and feel. Just as how you are able to read this log right now. Or how you are able to watch the shows aired on cable just as a billion other people can. However, there is a fundamental difference in the realities we perceive. And that fundamental difference is that we are not one all-encompassing, omnipotent, omnipresent being. WE are separate in body, thought and deed. Our own language speaks of such separation between the "I" and the "you" and the "s/he". We acknowledge our separation by calling the self the "I" and the other as "you" or "s/he". A separation which, I believe, can never truly be bridged unless the human race starts working as a hive mind.

In the end, all that I can truly know is the reality I perceive, touch, feel, sense. Beyond that is no more than a void to me; a blackness I cannot penetrate not because I have no desire to, but because I simply cannot. I cannot because I am myself. I cannot because I am not you. I cannot because I am not the other. I cannot know your reality just as you cannot know mine.

A Perception of Time

"Time passes." <-- This is quite a common pairing of words. However, it does lead one to ponder upon the implications of the statement. When people say "time passes," what do they really mean by that? What is time and how can it come to pass?

One interesting thing about the English language, or any language for that matter, is the relationship of the signifier and the signified. In such a relationship, the words of the language are the signifier and real world artifacts and experiences are those that are being signified. Thus, when we use the signifier "chair," we normally mean a piece of wood, plastic or metal that has been molded into a specific shape as to allocate space for our bodies to sit upon. The word "chair" signifies the real world object upon which we rest our rear ends. In the same respect, when we say "sun," we use it as the signifier for the medium sized, yellow star that is situated in the same galaxy as the Earth and is by far the closest star to the planet.

We must come to realize that the relationship between signifier and signified is not, in any way, constant. The association of a signifier to a reality depends on its popularity in society. For example, the insect we now have come to associate with the signifier "butterfly" was once, in antiquity, known by the signifier "flutterby." Some thing we now know to be called by a certain name may well have been signified by a completely different term in the past. As stated above, the association of a given signifier to a certain signified reality is not constant. This association can change from one generation to the next, from one society to the next, and even, from one person (of the same society) to the next.

Let us then apply the idea of the signifier and the signified to "time." Unsurprisingly, the signifier is easily the word "time" itself. However, when we come to the idea of the "signified," one cannot help but ask: what is it that time signifies?

In my opinion, time signifies a measurement just as length, width and height do. The difference, I believe lies in the scope. For me, time is a measurement of all processes, be they natural or man-made. Fifteen years, one would say, is quite the long time. But what does fifteen years in the life of a human being signify? One year signifies a certain amount of growth and change in a being. Let us return to the example of fifteen years. Let us say that the beginning of that fifteen years is not the birth of the person, but the moment of fertilization. In this case fifteen years would be the time measurement of all natural and artificial growth and changes that had occurred. Such would include the division of cells, specialization of cells, adaptation bodily functions, increased growth, puberty, and any or all other things that occurred. If we say then, two years in the life of a tree, specifying that the two years begin at germination, then that would include all processes determined after germination such as the growth of the top root, the emergence of the cotyledons, the growth of the first real leaves, the increase of height, and all other such processes that may occur.

Let us remember, however, that is this my perception of time. This is how I realize time and give it existence in the reality I perceive. Time is my signifier for a measurement of a given amount of natural and artificial processes. For others, time may be the signifier of a completely different signified. For example, there are those who consider time as the fourth dimension. There are those who considered it as a nonentity. Still, others see it merely as itself, never really considering what it signifies in reality. Time is time. To me, it is a measurement. To you, it may be completely different.

Hypocrisy

God. Faith. Religion.

There are many things I do not understand in this world; that would include the three words mentioned above. You can easily define things; say that this is defined as this or that has that definition. But mumbling out a definition is quite different from understanding. You could easily be spitting out words that actually mean nothing to you. It is one thing to memorize the definition; it is another to truly understand.

With that in mind, many times, I had come to ask myself: "what is Faith?:" Yet, the answer would elude me like a nymph of enchanted trees.  Robert Langdon, a character from the book “Angels and Demons” (authored by Dan Brown), calls Faith a gift. “Faith is a gift I have yet to receive” he had told the camerlengo. I sometimes think that he and I are in much the same boat. And, then, sometimes, that I am in much worse a position; worse in the sense that I do not even know whether I had received that gift or not; Or, if I had lost that gift as I journeyed through life. Maybe I took the wrong turn at fifth street or made a u-turn somewhere down the path and started to walk the other way. Maybe there was a fork in the road of life and I decided to take one street while my Faith took the other and we said goodbye at that point. I do not know. I sometimes have the sense that it is just there, hidden in some deep trench within my being – buried; covered over by the piles and piles of foolish insanities I had stacked up through my years. And sometimes, I feel like I had never had it. Faith is a gift. Maybe it is there and I had just not taken it out of its wrapper yet.

Sad, isn't it? Yet even sadder is the fact that I find no reason to search out the truth of my situation. From time to time, it does occur that the thought of whether or not I have faith pops into my head. However, it takes only a second before I discard the thought as unnecessary, a waste of time.

I do not know whether I believe or not. And yet, here I am, teaching the one thing that I have the least belief in. Everyday I get up and gather my things, readying myself for the day ahead. Every night I prepare the lessons for the next day; lessons for the class I am going to teach. I check journals and essays about the Catholic religion; grading them; righting them. Intellectually, I do understand the principles of the religion. I know its history and I have studied, quite thoroughly, its teachings. But instead of getting converted into belief, I feel instead that I am reading some Greek drama about Zeus or Persephone. I relish the feel of antiquity and romanticism it exudes, and I appreciate the mastery with which the tales are spun. However, that is as far as I go. My mind refuses to go any further.

It is amazing, isn't it? The extent of my hypocrisy is so far reaching that even I cannot grasp its bounds. At times, I try to escape the label of hypocrite by reason. I tell myself that the class is a purely academic exercise; that I am not preaching a religion (one, especially, that I have little, or no, faith in); that all I am doing is opening the students' eyes to the existence of it. I tell myself that all I am doing is showing them what the religion is about, according to the facts and documented beliefs of the thing; that all I am doing is righting some possible misconceptions about one of the largest congregations on the planet. Everyday I tell myself that. And, everyday I cannot fail to see how hypocritical I am because what I say in class is so different from what I actually do.

If someone were to come up and tell me to my face that I am such a hypocrite, I would probably shake his hand and tell him: "that is so true." I know that I am a hypocrite no matter how much a part of me tries to explain otherwise. However, I see no real reason why I should change this. I am not hurting anyone else. My hypocrisy affects only my own psychological health. In addition, it gives me interesting topics to think about on dull days when there is just nothing interesting to do.