Metaphors can be powerful if we take a moment to reflect on what they might mean to us.
Take a moment to consider your own eyes. In your mind, visualize your own right eye.
Can your own right eye see itself?
Is this physically possible?
If you answer yes, there might be little reason to read any further.
I imagine your answer is: No.
Then you might add something like: “Not unless I look at myself in a mirror or watch myself on a photograph or a video”.
So what are your reflections (not your reflection in a mirror, to be clear) when thinking about “The Eye Cannot See Itself”?
One thing that comes to my mind is, that whatever I see depends on, where I stand physically and in which direction, that I look. We could call this my line of sight – or maybe my perspective.
I cannot possibly be in two places at the same point in time physically.
Therefore in any point in time I have a limited perspective.
I could choose to move physically to another place and look in another direction. This would provide another line of sight. Another perspective.
Equally thinking about my physical brain – and in extension my mind, I can only hold a limited perspective at any moment in time. If I use my – flawed memory – then I might be able to recall previous experiences – previous lines of sights or perspectives.
Using this metaphor of an eye, realizing that my right eye cannot see itself, then I might choose to, at least mentally put myself in someone else’s shoes, and try to imagine seeing things through their eye(s).
Some would refer to this a empathy in the sense of the ability to see things from someone else’s perspective. Maybe even compassion.
Maybe it is worth in many walks of life to see eye to eye – or maybe mouth to ear – and listen to each other?
There is probably more than one perspective and more than initially meets the eye.
See you.
Do you see others to and see things through their eyes?