The Puzzling Shadow Of Perception

As I slid from my car onto the Hobby Lobby parking lot, I was startled to see some tiny birds flying low--very low--to the ground. But one incongruity made me wonder: they were only an inch long.

But they were surely birds; my eyes and experience both convinced me of that. Perfectly formed and precisely shaped, yet just an inch long.

Inch-long birds, skimming quickly, lowly over the asphalt. Even though their appearance lasted but seconds, their extraordinary qualities didn't escape me. And for a few moments my mind wrestled with the puzzle. How could such a thing be, especially since they appeared to be furiously flapping without covering much territory?

I pondered this mystery until the tiny birds flew completely out of sight. Though they had just been directly in front of me, they disappeared instantly! How could they possibly vanish--into thin air, so to speak-- without crossing the rest of the parking lot? Yet they appeared and then disappeared not two feet away.

Though this vignette played from start to finish in no more than 10 seconds, the elapsed time seemed to stretch into minutes. Simultaneously wonderful and weird, how could this be?

A period of mental grappling and closer observation finally yielded the answer.

Without being conscious of it, I had been staring into a pool of standing water that had assumed the same color as the asphalt. The water's surface didn't seem shiny, but it was indeed reflecting flying birds... birds high in the sky.

Perfectly shaped... quickly winging their way south... birds in the autumn sky. Thus the large sky birds momentarily manifested themselves as reflected images of tiny puddle birds which magically, instantly ceased to exist at the water's edge.

Tiny inch-long birds

Skimming near the water's edge

To cease existing.


*****

As confirmed by my wife's experience above, perception is a strange creature with unpredictable habits. Ear and eye both instantly agree that one thing or another is the absolute, positive truth... then other facts declare themselves and convert perception into allusion.

How often has the puzzling, quickly-formed shadow of perception upon which we hang our reputations--on the job, in relationships, in child rearing--been dispelled by the light of insight that shines in a later season?

Copyright 2004 James McAlister

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