Perception.

As I walk around the pool at work, sometimes I think about certain things. And a few days ago, this was the train of thought that I had.

When I come out of anesthesia, I don't remember alot of what I do. In fact, there's usually a good fifteen minutes of yelling and thrashing that I apparently did of which I have no memory. This intrigues me because technically, I was awake, I interacted with people, and I existed. However, to me this time doesn't exist because I have no memory, not even a slight recollection, of this time. Although I apparently talked, moved, thought, and lived in these moments, because I cannot recall them they, in a way, don't exist to me.

It's sort of like we build our lives on our memories, on what we can recall and what we know happened. What's the significance of a moment if it never seemed to happen? I mean, yes, it did happen, to some people, but to my perception of the world, that moment may as well never have happened. I cannot recall it, I cannot think about it because for me it might as well not have happened.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend, I think Gauraw, once. When I was taking astronomy, I learned that the universe isn't still, it's expanding. The other stars and galaxies are all moving away from us, and as such the light waves are expanded so that we don't see what these bodies are emitting, we see an altered form of them based on their position and speed. It's kind of complicated, but it made me think. We aren't seeing the universe as it is at all objectively. We just see some convuluted image on earth of a stretched out, distorted sort of universe. I began to wonder what the universe looks like objectively, without the distortion. But then Gauraw was like, does it matter? The thing is, we see the universe as we percieve it. And we build our understanding of the universe based on what we can perceive. Maybe it's distorted, but does that make it the wrong view? If that's how it is from where we are, if that's how the universe actuallly appears to us, if our perception is the universe as we know it, then what does an "objective view" of the universe really mean? The universe only exists to us as we can see it.

I also thought about this because Dustin is slightly colorblind. He just has trouble with greens now and then. He can't see green fireworks, for example. This made me wonder how the world was different to him. Sometimes I used to wonder if I saw color like everyone else. What if I actually saw everything in what would be the negatives to anyone else? What if my entire color schema was opposite of every other person? As long as it was consitent, I'd never be able to tell. Then I realized it doesn't really matter if I do or not, because either way I'm functioning in a world which I completely understand based on the colors I can see. Does it matter if my red is someone else's green or my green fireworks are white to Dustin?

We all interpret our world as we perceive it. We base our lives on the experiences we have had and can recall. Our life is based upon the perception of the world as we see it. Sometimes I wonder, what if I'm not seeing it all? What am I missing that other people see? If I could perceive the world from someone else's view, what would I find? Does it really matter?