When I was less than 10 years old, I received a science kit as a Christmas gift. It contained all kinds of interesting items. It Included a microscope, with slides to examine samples I collected from around my environment.
The piece of the kit I had the most fun with was the magnifying glass. MIschievously, I figured out how it could be a tool to burn ants and bugs out on the concrete driveway. This kit also had a glass prism to study light waves. I could thereby learn the physics of how light is bent and travels. I carried that small glass prism in my pocket for a fair amount of time, showing it off to friends at school. I was fascinated at how it distorted the sunlight coming through our front room window.
A notable feature of a prism is that it takes one single source of clear light and multiplies it into multiple rays or beams of colored light. It gives a new perspective and appearance to what we are accommodated to in our everyday lives. It has the potential to change our way of seeing the world around us. What if we apply the idea of a prism to non tangible objects or things.....like information???
Ironically, we don't have a single source of information or light...we have countless sources assaulting us. Media comes in audio and visual and on numerous occasions in a day. It fills our inbox and voice mail. We have to opt out of mass texting rather than op in.
It can be nonstop if we choose to tune in on the devices that seem to be attached to our hands and hip pockets. Do we need a prism of the opposite power to help us decipher and filter this onslaught into a single understandable wave of light? Without it, are we forced to examine all this information with a prism of doubt? A prism that makes us more confused and more discouraged? We don't know what to believe, who to believe or who to trust. Nothing but doubt consumes us, when we instead crave stability to preserve the homeostatic contentment that we biologically need for survival.
Election season is by far the worst for what I have tried to describe. It is stunning how many channels and sources are broadcast. I grew up with just three channels on a black and white, rabbit-eared TV. Radio was mostly for music with only hourly, short news briefs. Most evenings, it takes what seems like an insufferable amount of time to channel surf to avoid resting the remote on a news or pundit hosted channel. I admit to watching more than the average amount of news coverage. I do this for both general current events and for the latest breaking news on the circus of the POTUS race. From comments on Arnold Palmer's anthropometric measurements, to word salads about Jesus being or not being King, nothing surprises me anymore. The great majority of news coverage is no longer relevant to me.
My mind was made up quite a while ago. It has become entertainment and a reason to shake my head from side to side. I have put my prism away for now. I have lost confidence in its ability to help me see things clearer or differently. Too much stimuli, too many differing opinions overwhelmed my prism of doubt and made it useless to me. I will rely on my instinct and experience from now on.
That sounds negative, doesn't it? I honestly don't mean it to have that flavor.... I have just resigned myself to the fact that I became too old too fast and marginally wise too slowly. In the time I have left, I will examine and decipher information differently than I have in the past.
If anyone knows where I can get a prism of optimism, certainty or hope, let me know!