A couple days ago I was at the Guggenheim in Bilbao with my family. As we walked through our third exhibit, artwork by Anish Kapoor, I started to wonder whether my children (or I for that matter) would really connect with anything in the museum. I didn’t really like the first two rooms of this particular exhibit, but the third room was a revelation. It was full of mirror sculptures, for lack of a better way to describe it. At first glance it looked just like mirror sculptures, but with no real twist. Then the lesson in perspectives started.
The first thing I saw when we walked into the room was that everyone walking around was upside down in the mirrors. That was pretty cool because obviously we weren’t really upside down. But when I walked closer I was right side up again and parts of me were huge. Stepping back a little, I said to my family, “Oh, I like this mirror, it makes me look thin!” They burst out laughing because apparently from where they were standing I looked really fat.
Why am I writing about this? I guess it was just another reminder of how much perspectives play a role in our lives. I think we forget that what we see/feel at any given moment is one perspective, and that someone else could be seeing/feeling something totally different. The exhibit reminded me that we can play with perspectives and have fun doing it. And then we get to choose the one that feels the best. Who’s to say what is reality in a room like that…it all depends on where you’re standing!
If your life were a hall of mirrors, where would you want to stand? What would you want to see?