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DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?

Sunday Feb. 8, 2015


Are things what they are?

Or what they look like?

Is that a bowl of fruit, or just a painting or photo of a bowl of fruit?

Of course we can tell the difference.

Was it a bowl of real fruit, or fake fruit?

Easy to say it doesn’t matter – but in most things (to say nothing of a hungry guy wanting an apple or banana) it does matter.

How we see things, and how they really are, represent opportunities for illusion – or self-delusion.

I’m not doing a spade-calling exercise.

I’m wondering how much happier many of us might be if we called things what they are rather than what we wish they were.

Is every friendship a true friendship or does it just look like a friendship?

Is every opportunity really an opportunity, or does it just look like an opportunity?

Is every career a good choice?

Or is it the job you are doing until you find happiness doing something else?

Is a marriage a happy place just because it is called a marriage?

Is our existence, our life, a kind of happiness we espouse and dream of – a joyous space, a happy place where we live, and truly live it?

Or is it stay between the ditches neutral survival, denial of reality – long since emptied of child’s play and limitless dreams – when we should be soaring over mountains, or strolling glorious valleys of joy?

Are things what they are, or what they look like?

How we see life is how we live life, and if we want to live differently we need to see our life differently.

Don’t we?


Mark Kolke

column written/ published from Calgary, AB

morning walk:  -12C/11F (airport temps.) but Gusta found some puddles, so even with a north wind it is still mushier at this end of the city. Gusta romped, I strolled – but stopped to admire a marvelous sunrise, gorgeously evoking summer day feelings. Do you see what I see?


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