Contact Michele
Welcome to Coastland Contemplation, a column intended as inspirational entertainment. I'm Michele Oksen.
My home, since 1983, is a remote cabin in the Santa Lucia Mountains between Cambria and Paso Robles. I overlook Lake Nacimiento from land my grandfather traded a horse and some tires for in the early 1930's.
My sincere hope is that each month you will join me for an online nature walk somewhere in these magnificent Pacific coastlands. Each time we step into the virtual great outdoors together I aspire to, with nature's guidance, encourage you to find opportunities to contemplate life and evolution.
Contact Marcia
In 2004, Marcia Rhoades and her husband, John, moved from Salt Lake City to Cambria. Life at their Grace Meadows Ranch in the Santa Lucia Mountains gives Marcia endless opportunities to photograph wildlife and the natural beauty of the Central Coast. |
|
Fog – Perceptions in the Mist
by Michele Oksen
Every year around Independence Day we expect some fog on our spectacular SLO coast. Residents and regular summertime visitors know that at times there’s this drippy wet mist that cloaks us and it can be so dense it diminishes the availability of recognizable landmarks. Guideposts seemingly vanish. What rock?
When it’s foggy and we’re driving our vehicles we will likely slow down, possibly push the button on the flashing hazard lights and continue to inch along - so as to keep from becoming a stationary speed bump for the next guy. Thankfully, when the situation is considered dangerous, we quite naturally have an internal system that sets all the senses on high alert. When our sight is compromised our ears, nose, skin and taste buds become intensely aware of the environment. As compensation for impaired vision we automatically activate our advanced and insightful assessments and appraisals of the landscape.
However, this is not always so in our ordinary daily lives. When we go about living - when we traverse life’s terrain - we generally keep our “peddles to the metal” and roar toward our destination without consideration of the personal fog we function in. To operate a vehicle in fog can be frightening enough but what about the navigation of our human vessel through our constant fog like perception?
When we rely on and can see the visual clues like the painted lines on the roads, the signs and signals that inform and warn us, we feel secure. It’s not something we give much thought to but we have been conditioned to depend on things that contribute to our orientation. When these points of reference are blocked from our view or seemingly inaccessible we may become uncomfortable – maybe even bewildered or confused. The good news is - when we have journeyed headlong into life’s vastness and we suddenly realize our surroundings are obscured by our own obliviousness it can be a great awakening.
To assume that what we see is the same reality for everyone is to set ourselves up for collisions with inconspicuous or obscured obstacles and agendas. Each of us have lens colored by our personal lives. We all have filters that keep us from seeing the infinite possibilities before us. What one person sees is not necessarily what another person sees. As with crime scenes where witnesses see entirely different scenarios, we all have our own truth as to what actually happens around us. Both could swear under oath that what their senses interpreted was true and both could be telling the truth. Even in science. Historically even that which has been determined to be fact, is eventually discovered to be something different than it was defined to be. We see what we believe is possible. Reality and truth are whatever the observers filters let through. They are subjective. Reality and truth are whatever convinced us based on what we’ve learned in life and what we think we know.
If we consider that we are all entranced in a fog of past experiences, integrated teachings, cultivated beliefs and stages of evolution then we can begin to accept different opinions and judgments as just that. We agree to disagree. We unburden ourselves from ineffective and theatrical insistences that we’re right and they’re wrong. We drop out of our own drama clubs and get real.
That’s when we can begin to appreciate and awe over differences rather than be intimidated by them. Even when we think someone else’s opinions and judgments are bullshit we can choose to be fascinated by them. Without energy depleting, time wasting and destructive arguments about who’s right and who’s wrong we have opportunities to understand one another on a deeper level. Rather than attempts at compliance and forceful control – which often results in resentment and retaliation - acceptance of differences can contribute to constructive interactions. This gives us a better chance to work together toward peaceful solutions.
No doubt about it – life lived in fog is a challenge. Strangely enough, to recognize the distortion factor is to see more clearly.
Photos by Marcia Rhoades.
Banner image by Fugle |
