106. A Surprising World

You always see the world from your own point of view. You know the world is not your perception of it, and it might even be quite different from what you see. There are many parts of the world you haven’t seen, parts beyond the range of your present understanding. You know such things exist, because you’re sometimes surprised by the things you discover.

But sometimes it feels like it’s been ages since you saw anything genuinely new. You’re then tempted to conclude that you’ve seen it all, and the world has nothing left to offer you. But then you’re surprised once again and you realize the foolishness of your conclusion. Others see the world differently than you do, and sometimes they know things you don’t know. This is evidence enough to regularly remind you that you haven’t actually seen everything.

There is always something more, always an incredible variety of experiences you haven’t had and may never have. As a result, your awareness is always less than complete. This incompleteness can be worrying. It means your own perspective is only a fragment of a broader whole, a whole you can’t possess or even comprehend. How can you reconcile this fact with the requirements of life? For you must live and act from your own perspective — there is simply no choice in the matter.

The only honest way seems to be to question your perspective. You need to do this not to deny your experiences or their meaning, but simply to recognize there might be other possibilities than the ones you’ve already considered. You need to be humble about your beliefs, and accept the possibility that the truth might be other than what you think it is.

It’s awareness of possibility itself that is key. It means keeping yourself forever open to something beyond all you’ve seen and all you know. The world is always bigger and more interesting than it might seem, and it is an endless source of novelty and surprise.