h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is one of many columns originally published in The Sechelt Sun, Sechelt, BC.



Wallpaper

Joni Mitchell said it well:"All in all it seems to show, that you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone...."
I found tremendous solace when I moved here in being surrounded by green on the ground and blue in the water and sky. That nourished me, and I'm damned glad to be here.
Yet I find, too often, that I start to see the trees around me, the road that wends its way through those trees, the occasional house that punctures the idyll and all the brooks and creeks that dot the watershed, as wallpaper. I don't see it for what it really is: What is there before people arrived.
Every time I venture into the city I can't wait to escape, as though the pressure of vehicles, all that concrete, and the lack of green (particularly noticeable downtown) is oppressive, destructive to the psyche. And I see the city as new, each time I go in.
Changing our surroundings sometimes makes us see our world through a different perspective, though we used the same set of eyes. This was neatly demonstrated by a gorgeous colour photograph of a valley in New Zealand that Douglas Adams visited for the production of his co-authored book Last Chance To See, about endangered species of the world. I saw that photograph and words stopped. As Adams said, he did what we all do in the West when confronted with something like that: we photograph it.
A book called In The Realm Of The Senses, wherein all of our senses are explored and explained, says that we fail to smell the city dump after being in it for a bit because our brains will overload on all the new touch/smell/taste/hearing information that we're constantly bombarded with. Thus, our brains filter the information for us.
I think that must happen with our surroundings. We become so familiar with the layout of a given place that we fail to see what's there any more. (Remember that old test: pick someone you've seen all day long, turn so you can't see them, then say what colour their shirt is....are you right?)
I had a little game I'd play with myself when I'd see an American plate on a car in the city. What would they be seeing? How different is the sight from what they're used to? I would attempt to see what I saw every day through the perspective of one who'd not seen it before, and it was quite enlightening.
I had a real moment like that, stopped at a filling station outside Bellingham in Washington State. Came out of the shop part, looking at the fuel-island, and saw a sign: "No Checks Please". I stopped. Checks for what? A moment's bafflement, then...the Americans spell cheque differently, which is what they meant. Then I stopped again: Paying for gasoline with a cheque?
Apparently the Americans pay for damn near everything with cheques, or are at least able to. That's their way, and it's a different perspective that woke me up a little.
This change in perspective is akin to moving out of the parent's house for the first time, and staking a claim in the world alone, or with friends. Few of us care what sort of a dump we move into, as long as it's ours. Maybe we don't think it's particularly wonderful, however, we can always move up, away from the window that's got a view of a brick wall.
I once heard a story on the radio, which makes a point for all of us about our perspective, as well as our conditioned consumerist society: After consulting with the Rabbi about how to increase his living space, a young man was told to gradually move the entire contents of his farm into the house. He then was instructed to remove them all and he discovered how much space he had.
I think a change in perspective is a good, and probably needed, undertaking for everyone. I don't mean casually looking at something while on holiday, then coming back and doing all the same stuff as before. I'm talking about really grokking the new view, and seeing how it works, and maybe, learning something.
Maybe if we all did that, we wouldn't have to consult the Rabbi to give us that lesson.