Or is it? Perhaps things are not as black and white (or gold and white in this case) as we sometimes think.
The echoes of #dressgate continue to reverberate throughout social media. My son and I were sitting on the couch when he showed me the picture, on his phone, of the now infamous dress. He asked what colors I saw. I suspected a trick question, but answered truthfully, black and blue. It was obvious.
My son laughed skeptically and informed me he saw a gold and white dress. We checked with my wife who saw a gold and silver dress. Same picture, three different perspectives. What’s going on?
The explanation given for the dissimilar testimonies revolves around light wavelengths, visual cortex, and how each individual processes the information their senses acquire. It seems they are not the same. Of more importance to me are the parallel lessons to be learned about our own stubborn beliefs and willingness to defend them. And perhaps we can extend the experience to grow a bit in our understanding of well-being.
@alexismadrigal tweeted, “The dress should remind us all: what you see is mostly a projection of what your brain expected to see.” When it comes to wellness, it is the same. Our expectations can be downright destructive to health. After all, aren’t the so-called “rules” of well-being hinged on age, decline, parts wearing out, etc.? And don’t we expect to see evidence of this played out in our own lives and on our own bodies? Sometimes, we let our own convictions convict us.
It can be problematic to maintain health when our focus is directed toward all the maladies we are told we are susceptible to. The normal expectations of wellness are lowered dramatically by visions of sickness that we unwittingly reinforce in our thoughts and conversations.
“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” This ancient Biblical wisdom has practical applications today. It is our attitudes and anticipations – our thought-models – that lend themselves to better or worse outcomes. Unfortunately, human thinking lends itself to fears and worries upon which it relentlessly fixates. Mortal consciousness seems hypnotized by an ever-repeating rant of uncertainties.
“Mortal mind sees what it believes as certainly as it believes what it sees,” wrote Mary Baker Eddy. “It feels, hears, and sees its own thoughts.” Just like those who swore the dress was white and gold, we believe what we see and are ready to protect our position at all costs. And Eddy makes a good point as she continues, “Pictures are mentally formed before that artist can convey them to canvas. So is it with all material conceptions.”
If daily living is our canvas, what impressions are we throwing out there based on allegiance to some fairly hideous concepts about life and health that we have never considered questioning? After all, our senses do not lie…right?
Craig Silverman, writing about the lessons of the dress from a journalist’s standpoint said, “Let it be a reminder of the fact that what we think we are seeing, hearing and understanding may in fact have no connection to fact.” Point well taken.
Willingness to challenge our convictions requires a modicum of humility – an honest assessment of one’s own prejudices. Support in bringing about fresh perspectives needs to come from sources outside our own limited viewpoints. My life experiences have pointed me toward God for the needed humility and out-of-the-box answers to wellness and life’s big curiosities.
Like the period when I experienced recurring trouble with the vision in the corner of my right eye. A distorted image frequently appeared on and off for several months. Terms such as ‘macular degeneration’ would pop up into my thought. Yet as disturbing as that sounded I wasn’t going to be persuaded that the difficulty was a lasting condition or recurring threat to my vision. Prayer helped to counteract the detrimental convictions brought on by fear and secure a better sense of my spiritual purity and unhampered eyesight. “The hearing ear, and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both of them,” This reassuring statement in Scripture isn’t just wishful thinking, but authoritative insight into the flawless nature of my being. Eventually, a small, hard irritant washed out of the corner of my eye and the distortions disappeared.
Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” This watchful approach to living is really a duty each of us must accept if we are to understand the intricacies of life that very well could be as plain as the nose on your face.
