Tilt your perspective

Do you remember playing with a kaleidoscope? With every turn of the tube, wonderful patterns and colors revealed themselves.

We didn’t cry when the first image disappeared. We knew that nothing was lost; another beautiful sight always followed.

In a kaleidoscope, a set of fragments forms a pattern but isn’t locked into place…shake it, twist it, change the angle, change perspective and then the same fragments form an entirely new pattern.

Reality, the kaleidoscope tells us, is only a temporary arrangement. Creativity consists of rearranging the pieces to create a new reality.

As a Western Union patent attorney Edward Dickerson said:

“Edison had a remarkable kaleidoscope brain. He turned that head of his and these things came out as in a kaleidoscope, in various combinations, most of which were patentable.”

Over the course of a day, we each go through a series of different activities, energy highs and lows, and mood swings. We tilt the tube.

Over the course of a lifetime, we change careers, relationships, and lifestyles, and in the process change ourselves. We tilt the tube.

Life is like peering into a kaleidoscope, and just as we’re looking at a gorgeous pattern we think maybe we’d even like to keep around forever, the colors morph into something completely different.

The design of kaleidoscopes lies in the use of mirrors to create multiple reflections and what looks like different versions of the same image.

What an interesting and yet symbolic example of how the world we understand and view around us is very much a mirror of our own values, expectations, and information that we have received over our lifetime.

And, as we shift any one of those factors, our perspective and worldview can change as a consequence.

With a myriad of colorful fragments we create our experience.

Would a tilt of your perspective result in a new and enchanting image?

I think so!

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