#9: The Kaleidoscope
A human being is like a kaleidoscope. Now, stay with me a moment, and I will try to explain.
A kaleidoscope is an intriguing though generally unassuming object, small, and not always so interesting to look at on the outside. Inside, however, it provides us with another view. It seems amazing, beautiful, stunning, complicated.
In fact it is simply a few colourful beads, some mirrors, and light, combining three simple elements to create a beautiful art piece.
So, how does this apply to a human, a person? Let’s take the well known and well used cliché, and extend it a little:
Beauty is on the inside.
We are all made up of the same parts: bones, flesh, blood. But when put together, we are unique living beings.
The light going into the kaleidoscope is life, the colours and geometrical shapes created through this are an individual’s personality, their soul and being, which is where the beauty is found. We are all kaleidoscopes.
As my knowledge on kaleidoscopes is rather limited, I came across this website in my research, and I particularly noted the last line in their definition:
Anyone who picks up a carefully made kaleidoscope, old or new, and spends the time to view the world through it, will find it a universally appealing experience.
This was true for my experience, particularly when I discovered that the wonderful shapes and colours that I could see could also be captured on my camera.
I found that I could share what I was seeing with the world, that it wasn’t simply a unique experience isolated in myself. I could share these wonderful lights and shapes. This excitement at sharing this wonder — is it not like when you meet a wonderful person, who you just wish to share with everyone else you know? When you meet someone and your mind instantly links them with someone totally different, and you know that they will get on splendidly?
Humans are kaleidoscopes. Not simply for the inner beauty that can be found, but for the fact that everyone is complicated inside, a mixture of all colours and thoughts and ideas.
Where this analogy falls is in how easy it is for you to simply pick up a kaleidoscope and look through, to see inside and witness the beauty. We cannot simply pick up our fellow human beings and look through them, we cannot take photographs of a person’s personality. Our words, when trying to describe one person to another, fall short of the person as we know them, as we see them.
It is the same when expressing ourselves. Myself, even. Inside, if I look, I have my own patterns and images, some more wonderful than others. I have feelings, thoughts, ideas, memories, that I cannot fully share with any other person on earth. I cannot take photographs — if I could, that would not be enough.
I can try though, and for me, I can use my writing. I can use similes, metaphors, analogies. With each blog post, I get a little closer to what I am trying to say, how I am trying to express it. With each interaction with another person, I can get a little closer to understanding them as they are inside, in starting to see the colours that make them so beautiful.
