Last night my husband and I went to an art gallery to watch the performance of a Japanese painter. The painter calls herself an “ink performer” and she has performed her art in many countries all over the world. The painter had already painted an intricate, fearsome looking dragon, in black ink, on rice paper, mounted on a silk tapestry. Her performance was devoted to accenting this dragon, by dramatically painting it with dips and dabs and sometimes sword-like thrusts of bright metallic gold ink, while doing a traditional Japanese dance involving bells, drums, and all of the while wearing a large, lengthy, enveloping kimono (she was teeny), which she had also previously hand painted. This experience was fascinating and interesting and so completely out of my own frame of reference. The artist could not speak any English, and she had just arrived from Japan the day before. I imagine that while looking out into the gallery at a small sea of gaping Americans, that we, too, seemed completely out of her own frame of reference. And yet it was magical experience for all of us.
I learned the term “frame of reference” when I was in high school and I took a World Cultures class from a wholly devoted and passionate teacher. When learning about a country, my teacher would transform his entire classroom into the country that we were learning about, as best that he could. I distinctly remember when we studied Japan that he wore a kimono, bowed to us as we entered the classroom, performed tea ceremonies and he insisted that instead of Mr. Sloan, we were to call him Sloan-san. He would always emphasize that we were to remove judgment from our lives’ experiences as much as possible. He would remind us that it was just by happenstance (for instance my soul ended up in Caucasian female body, born in America, in 1970), that we entered into our own particular circumstances, and that is the same for everyone else in this world. What is normal and pedestrian for someone, is unusual and exotic to someone else, and this is mostly because we are each looking at life, through the lens of our own frames of reference.
Today’s world is more global and connected than ever. More people travel the world over than ever before. Computers have made it easy to access global websites and products and programs at the click of a button. But “frame of reference” isn’t just about other countries and their traditions. Travel around the United States, and you get all sorts of different “takes” on food, BBQ, music, dance styles, celebrations, etc. Go from your own city, just twenty miles out into the countryside and you will experience a whole different way of life, without even having to refill your gas tank.
Life is so much fuller and more interesting when you stop trying to live up to an image. Life is so much fuller and more intriguing when you let your curiosity and imagination move you past your rote habits and comfort zones. When you live up to an image of who you think you should be, or what you want people to think of you (hint: people don’t think about you much at all, except maybe occasionally, when they may be questioning what you are thinking about them), you start limiting your choices of where you go, and what you do, and what you experience, and who you have these experiences with, throughout your days. If “these people/places/experiences” don’t fit your image, you don’t try them out, and then your life starts to get extremely limited to singular views, and uniform, biased experiences. Your frame of reference gets really tight, like a camera’s aperture becoming almost closed, to the size of a pinhole. And when a lot of people start walking around with pinhole apertures, the world becomes a dangerous place. We live in a more globally mobile world than ever. We can’t limit our frames of reference. It could become our downfall.
Today, do something to broaden your own aperture. Order or make a food that you’ve never tried before. Go to a different neighborhood and check out their eclectic little shops. Instead of force-feeding your own strong opinions about politics or religion, earnestly question and listen to someone who sees things differently than you do, with the goal of trying to understand their point of view. Watch a foreign film. You get the gist. Do more of this type of thing in your life on a regular basis, and the world becomes a less scary and more fascinating place than you ever could have imagined. You start to fully appreciate that we are all just souls/life force made of the same stuff, which just happened to land in different bodies, in different families, in different neighborhoods, in different cultures and in different countries. When you really broaden your aperture, your frame of reference starts to open so wide-angled that you see the picture as all-in-one. You begin to see and to fully understand that we are all just tiny little specks of the One Big Thing.
“Your frame of reference is everything. It will determine the quality of your entire life. Nothing escapes its influence.” – Tom Bilyeu
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Great observations today. I was thinking that frame of reference is closely related to perspective and that they are often referred to interchangeably. But they are definitely different.
Recently, I’ve been working on reframing my perspective around the subject of body weight. Excess body weight, to be exact. A few months ago I was told by my endocrinologist that long-term insulin use has led to extreme insulin resistance. That’s a bummer because I have to inject insulin every day to stay alive; my pancreas is on permanent vacation. The net result of insulin resistance is that I’ve been gaining weight and it will be very difficult to take it off. Again, bummer.
I went into pity party mode for a couple of weeks and then decided that I had the wrong perspective. If I had been born 100 years ago, I wouldn’t have lived to my current age. Type 1 diabetes would have killed me as a much younger woman, leaving my husband a widower with a small child to care for. But instead, thanks to modern medical science, every day I can inject a hormone that my body doesn’t make anymore, and every single day is one that I wouldn’t have had the privilege of living, had I been born in an earlier era. That’s a pretty sobering thought. But also a joyful thought, because it reminds me to be grateful. And hopeful – the science around weight loss is evolving rapidly, and it may not be too far in the future that a treatment suitable for T1d is discovered. (FYI, reducing my weight would automatically cut my insulin resistance in half, allowing me to inject less insulin and eliminate a host of medications that I despise taking!)
It’s also a bummer that our society disparages people who carry extra weight; I’m guilty of doing that too. But as a heavier person, I have a new frame of reference. I now realize that it’s not always about gluttony or lack of self-control – there may be a valid medical condition underlying what we see on the surface. So, I’m changing my perspective. I’ve been purchasing clothing that is size-appropriate and stylish. I may have to be fat for a while, but I don’t have to be frumpy! That is a new perspective for me, which I would have been less likely to recognize from my old frame of reference. Developing the ability to walk a mile in another person’s shoes is an invaluable gift!
I love your wonderful ability to always find the lessons and the silver linings, Kelly. Big hugs!!