All my traveling begins the same, and that is by asking one
question that will guide my experience: What lesson will this trip teach me if
I am open to it? For this journey to the Midwest, the answer didn’t hit me
until the last day, but once I realized what it was, I saw its threads running
through everything, waiting for me to notice, trusting that I would see.
On the flight across the country, I decided to get some work
done, and so I read New and Selected
Poems Volume I by Mary Oliver (one of the poets I am writing about in my
dissertation). Oliver, I argue, sees the world from a chosen perspective, and
this choice informs her perception and understanding of all life in the
universe. In other words, Oliver’s poetry advocates this one basic lesson—we all
have the power to choose how we see things, how we approach trying to understand
this world, this universe. Here is an excerpt from Oliver’s “When Death Comes”
to illustrate what I mean:
I want to step through the door
full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that
cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon
everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more
than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another
possibility,
and I think of each life as a
flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music
in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward
silence,
and each body a lion of courage,
and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all
my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the
world into my arms.
So on that flight to Kansas City, Oliver’s poems instilled
in me a mindset, one that encouraged active choice about perspective and that promised
a higher understanding as a result of that choice.
After arriving in Missouri, I headed straight for Liberty,
where I was fortunate enough to participate in celebrating the 2015 cohort of
Truman Scholars in what they call the Truman Scholar Leadership Week.
Undoubtedly, I have never been in a room with so many movers and shakers, so
many altruistic humans who have dedicated their lives to acts of service and to
making the world a better place for all of us. Saturday evening ended with a
talk from Professor Marcia Chatelain, former Truman Scholar who recently
published her first book entitled South
Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration. Though her entire talk was inspirational,
the piece that stirred me most came out during the Q&A session after the
talk. When asked how to handle a conversation with someone about an issue where
the two views are entirely opposing (in this case, we were discussing the
events in Ferguson), Chatelain advised this: ask the person what value guides
that particular understanding or interpretation of the event or issue. She
said, and I’ll do my best to get it right here, that we all have a frame of
understanding that informs what we think, and in order to expand or deepen our
understanding, we must shift the frame. Shift the frame, shift the perspective.
To give a little more depth to her answer and to her talk, she was especially
advocating the value of studying history and the total value of education in
relation to this process of shifting one’s frame.
My next lesson came when Zachariah, his mom, Jami, and I
arrived in Henry, Illinois. We were driving across some areas of tall grass,
and I kept seeing little sparks of light in the distance, hovering over the
grass. I assumed it was just flashes from the reflecting headlights approaching
us, until Jami said that this was the first time this year she’d seen the
fireflies out. I was amazed! I had never seen fireflies before, and to see them
scattered out in the field at night was incredible. I was also stunned that my
limited knowledge about these tiny creatures prevented my ability to fully comprehend
what was real in that moment. I thought back to Chatelain and the value of education
in terms of informing our understanding of all things, including the mating
habits of fireflies. I was grateful for Jami’s wisdom that illuminated and made
richer my own interpretation of those lights in the field. Unfortunately, I was
unable to get a photo of this scene, but here’s one to give you some sense of
what it was like, along with a photo of Jami, Zachariah, and me at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Liberty and another of us with his sister, Molly, and her baby, Barret, in Henry:
A few days later, Zachariah and I walked all across his
hometown, Henry, talking about his memories of the place and the events that occurred
during his childhood there. We marveled at the difference in our perception of
the little town. To me, it was idyllic, picturesque in terms of what I’d
imagine quintessential summer in America to be. I imagined running through
sprinklers on the lawn, swimming in the large river skirting Henry, watching
the fireworks in the park on Independence Day. It seemed a place of innocence,
of the good life, of small-town values. But to Zachariah, because of his not-always-so-fond
recollections of the place, Henry was full of ghosts, of hauntings, of a
troubled past. The town for him could never be what it was to me because of the
vivid memories encroaching upon his perception. Though both of our perspectives
were real and valid, time and the past shaped our views in a drastically
different fashion.
Later in the week when Zachariah and I arrived in Chicago,
one of our first destinations was Millennium Park to see The Cloud Gate, or
what some unfortunately refer to as “The Bean.” Architect Anish Kapoor designed
this art installation from stainless steel, and the effect is that viewers can peer
into a mirror-like surface that reflects the self in middle of the city
backdrop—to see one’s self in the context of the surrounding environment. As we
explored the various curves and contours of The Cloud Gate, I marveled at the
myriad ways the viewers interacted with the installation, how they engaged the art.
Some lay prostrate on the ground with their feet propped up against the base, some
made faces to see their expression reflected back, some rubbed the stainless
steel to get the tactile sensation of the cool metal, some walked beneath the
dome and peered up to see the seven or so versions of their self replicated
back from different angles and in different sizes. The Cloud Gate was an
artistic representation of differing perspectives.
Later that day, we ended up at The Art Institute of Chicago,
which houses six paintings from Claude Monet’s haystack series. The story goes
like this: in 1890/91, Monet painted stack(s) of hay during different seasons
and during different times of the day. What I saw when looking at these
paintings together was how much the natural environment changed the appearance
of the stack(s). Monet’s work is among my favorite, and his paintings never
fail to teach me valuable lessons in life, and in this case, the art reminded
me of the power nature can have on our impression, or perspective, of the
things around us. (For more info on Monet’s series, go here).
One evening, we took the super smart advice from my friend
Raul and visited The John
Hancock Center to catch an elevated view of the city rather than doing the
skydeck and ledge at Willis Tower (formerly known as Sears Tower). Rather than
paying $19.50 for a ticket at Willis, we bought a cocktail at The Signature Lounge
in Hancock. Talk about a change in perspective! From the 96th floor,
the city changed completely. From my bird’s-eye view, I got a solid geographical
and spatial understanding of the layout of Chicago. It was quiet and peaceful
(the wine helped with that), compared to struggling along the hustling streets
below. From that elevated point of view, my understanding of the space around
me shifted the frame so dramatically that I fell in love with Chicago. I saw
miles of beachfront, sailboats scattered across the Caribbean-blue water, the turning
Ferris wheel at Navy Pier, the green of trees filling the gaps between
buildings, the expanse of the suburbs reaching beyond city proper, the gardens and
pools making use of the often-neglected rooftop space, and the outstanding
architecture of each of the skyscrapers jetting up around and below me. It was
breathtaking, and I probably wouldn’t have understood the city’s magnificence
if not for seeing it from that height and from that perspective.
On the flight home, I returned to Oliver, and her words
crystalized the lesson from this trip. Here is an excerpt from “The Ponds”:
Still, what
I want in my life
is to be
willing
to be
dazzled—
to cast
aside the weight of facts
and maybe
even
to float a
little
above this
difficult world.
I want to
believe I am looking
into the
white fire of a great mystery.
I want to
believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the
light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each
flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
What all of this taught me is simple. Perspective changes
everything. But what I still haven’t quite figured out is what external or
internal influences determine how we adopt
any particular perspective. The lessons from this trip offer up a few philosophies.
Oliver’s poetry tells us we have the power to choose our perspective. Chatelain’s
advice encourages us to shift our frame to get a deeper understanding of things.
Jami’s generosity in sharing her wisdom reminds us that everyone is a teacher.
Zachariah’s view of his hometown illustrates the effect of past experiences in
how we perceive things. Kapoor’s installation invites curiosity when approaching
multiple perspectives. Monet’s paintings reveal how nature and the environment alter
our view. The heights of The John Hancock Center allow for transcendence and seeing
the world from a higher perspective. I suppose synthesizing these lessons gives
us one hopeful possibility—that regardless of how we see things in any given
moment, we have the power to change how we see things. In other words, if our
understanding and approach to life is based on our perspective, then all of
life depends upon the frame we choose to adopt. What will your choice be?
