What Do You See?

Take a look at the picture above.  When you look at this photo, what do you see (besides the obvious that's it's a lioness)?  Do you see anger?  Do you see danger?

I'll admit, that this photo makes this lioness look fierce, which she is.  Depending on how you look at it, and what you know about lions, it may or may not look like she is unhappy, mad even.  However, she isn't unhappy or upset at all.... she's yawning.  Which, if you spend any time around lions you understand that hey do this a lot... probably because they also sleep... a lot.

So, now that you understand  that she is yawning, does it change your perception of the photo?  Does it change how you feel about the lion?

There's a lot of stuff going on in our world today.  And, I would argue, that if you don't take a moment to stop and gain some understanding, you may walk away with a certain perception of what is happening.  And it would be really easy to see what you want to, or to assume something without really doing any research to see if your assumption is true. We all do this.

I found myself doing it the other night when watching the reports of the protests that are taking place.  I immediately went into assumption and judgement mode.  I will admit that I looked at the news video of one protest that was mostly High School students, and my immediate thought was... you are just looking for a way to get out of school.  I watched another report where some protesters then began to riot-- tearing up property, burning stuff, etc.... and I began to think things like you are just using this as an excuse to be destructive.  Words like immature, crybaby, spoiled, sore losers, over- reactionary, etc. floated through my skull.  And while some of those words and judgements may be right about some of these people, it occurred to me that I might not be looking at the full picture-- I might need some backstory.

Have you ever had a time in your life where you felt helpless?  Or taken advantage of?  Or powerless?  I have.  And that isn't a good feeling.  When you feel that way, what is your first instinct? I would say for many of us it would be to lash out, in any way we can.  To try and find a way to regain some sense of control.  That I can understand.  I by no means condone acts of violence or destruction.  Nor do I condone the name calling and ugliness of words that some people are flinging about. That's wrong no matter how you feel.  But, I can admit that while I may not fully approve of these protests, these people have the right to peacefully do so.  I can acknowledge that it's their own way of feeling like they have some type of control.  With understanding comes a form of compassion.  I begin to see them not as mindless, faceless, nameless beings, but as real people.

And I think that transformation.... seeing people as real... is what we all need to do in order to move forward.  I may never agree with you politically, but I can meet in you in the areas where we have some shared experience.  We can all relate to feelings of helplessness.  We can all relate to feelings of love.  We can all relate to the common shared experience of being a human being in a world that is sometimes hard and sometimes easy.  It's super hard being a human being.  If that's all we can agree on, I can work with that.  I must work with that.  If I am willing to at least listen to your backstory it might change my perception of your photo.  I might just look at your photo through eyes of understanding and compassion.

So, as hard as it is for me, I'm going to try and do that more.  My great hope for our country and for our world, is that we all try to do more of that.  That's it.  Nothing super fancy about today's blog.  But I will leave you with some more photos of these lionesses at night.

Just a little more backstory... we were in our Range Rover, at night and surrounded on all sides by a pride of 13 lions, mostly female with a few subadult males.  It was absolutely one the best things I have ever done.  It was also one of the most intimidating, because you can only spotlight one or two lions at a time, which means that at any given moment there are roughly 11 lions that you can't see.  You can't see where they are or what they are doing.  At one point, A big lioness walked over to my side of the vehicle and laid down right below my door.  My topless, windowless door.  I was aware that she had laid there, but soon forgot about her as we were spotlighting another lioness on the opposite side of the vehicle.  A few moments into this activity, as I was concentrating on taking photos of the other lioness, the lion laying beside me sneezed.  And I about dropped my camera, the sound was so close and startling.  No point to that story... just a fond memory.  Have a great week!