Note · · 1 min read
What Distance Allows Us to See
The image stays the same. The distance changes what you notice.
What do you see?
From a distance, many people see a red Coke can. Look closely and what looked like solid red resolves into cyan, black and white lines.
The image did not change. Only your distance from it did.
I find that a useful way to think about interpretation. Insults, success, failure, enemies, status and certainty can feel like qualities of an event itself. Sometimes they are the first story we have made of it.
A difficult conversation can look like disrespect from one distance and fear from another. A failed project can look like incompetence from one distance and a flawed system from another.
Neither the distant view nor the close-up is necessarily wrong. From afar, we see the pattern. Up close, we see what it is made of. Each reveals something the other hides.
The practice is to move between them without clinging to either. Before reacting, perhaps ask whether you are seeing what is there, or only what your current distance allows you to see.