The More You Look, The Less You See

I wanted fruit for breakfast this morning.

My sister threw out all the strawberries, because they had gone bad.

There were grapes in the fridge, but they, too, were looking like many of them were bruised and spoiling.

I wanted fruit.

As I was going through the grapes one-by-one and attempting to pick out all the rotten ones, leaving only the ones that were only slightly shrinking from going bad, I really started to notice what grapes looked like.

I don’t think I’ve ever stared at grapes so hard in my life.

I started think about (and making almost silent commentary about) how our ancestors (specifically my African ancestors) probably really understand these grapes, and fruit in general. When they see swollen, fibrous bags of juice and flesh, they can detect upon sight which are poisonous and which are nutritious.

I couldn’t help, but get the feeling that they see these fruit differently than I do. I had been sitting in my room for a little over a week (only occasionally coming out to show accountability and engage with my sister and her family) staring at my computer screen manipulating the Linux command prompt and filling my brain with information about the containerization of software applications for a certification exam.

My dreams this week were filled with images of things left unsaid, and hoped to be said. The people in my dreams were people I see regularly. Of what I can remember of my dreams, they were of ordinary life experience.

Perhaps I dream of the mundane, because even that is an experience that my life inside of computer code does not grant me.

“The more you look, the less you see.”

I first heard that phrase as a student in a Catholic boarding school in a Nigerian village. That statement never felt as true as they did as I stood their talking to grapes in my sister’s kitchen. When I looked up from the grapes it became clear to me how lost I had gotten in the grapes when I became conscious of my brain adjusting to the idea that I was standing in the kitchen. I almost startled at the thought of my sister standing somewhere near watching me and wondering if I had lost my entire mind.

The students in Nigeria had a lot of insanely insightful commentary that stuck with me my entire life. Going from elementary school in inner city Washington, DC to a Nigerian boarding school was perspective shifting for me. I was with Black people both times, but in one case I was with “urbanized” Black people, in the other case…I wasn’t really.

Some of the students in boarding school were skeptical of America. Many only hearing tales of relatives or neighbors “going abroad”. One even asked me if you get to America by going in a plane and just going “up up up.” I wondered why she didn’t consider that the plane would land. Since we were in Catholic school, I considered that she might be under the misconception that America = heaven.

I heard a lot of things as a high school student in Nigeria. I heard, saw and experienced a lot of things. Things that I really want to talk about sometimes. Things that I wish more Americans undestood.

During my college career at the Rochester Institute of Technology, I studied Clinical psychology. One day, one of my Psych professors, Dr. David Alan Kaiser landed on a PowerPoint slide about perception, and the difference between “tribesmen in Africa” and what I call “urbanized people”.

The tribesmen and the city dwellers were both given the same task. If I am remembering correctly, the task is to quickly recall various shapes (or patterns…I can’t remember exactly). What I do remember is that the “tribesmen” more easily remembered the images that were more consistent with patterns that occur natural in nature. The “urbanized people,” however, more easily recalled images that were more artificially constructed…I think. I think the difference was “more straight lines”.

The more you look, the less you see.

I have no conclusion. I’m still figuring it all out. I will probably never understand until I get an opportunity to ask the Creator if I make it to heaven.

Until then, the grass will continue to look greener in one place than it does in the other, but I challenge the person looking to stop and reconsider their perspective. Then, once their eyes have caught up to their brain, look again and reconsider what that shade of green really means.