the last word
Sandi Tomlin-Sutker, Associate Editor

I was fourteen, in 10th Grade, when I really understood that reality was not necessarily what it appeared to be.

My biology teacher, Mr. T, encouraged my budding curiosity, and I discovered metaphysical and esoteric thought about the very nature of the things we perceive with our five senses. I learned that we have a “blind spot” in our visual field and our minds fill in the spaces, based on assumptions and generalizations. I discovered optical illusions and have been fascinated ever since. Is the drawing I see two faces looking eye-to-eye or is it a martini glass? And the drawing of the lovely young woman with feathered hat—shift your focus and suddenly she is a warty old woman with a large nose!

In the 70s I read Fritz Perls, attempting to understand Gestalt Therapy. He talked often about figure/ground, but it was not until the late 80s that I began to grasp the significance of this psychological principle. I had experienced the shift that takes place when we see the old woman, and then, through some illusive mechanism we shift focus and the young woman emerges. Which image is “real”? What happens in our focusing that causes one image to appear, and then recede as the other image comes to the foreground?

At some point, I realized this was a metaphor for my emotional perceptions. I might be angry with my husband, for instance, sure that he was the cause of my frustration or anxiety. But I found that I could shift, at times, into a space where that “reality” simply changed. I could not force this shift. I wasn’t even clear when or why it took place. But it was a real shift of perception about reality. And in those moments I knew that my immediate, or my habitual, reactions to events were based more on my particular focus, than on some external meaning or reality.

If I could allow my focus to shift, to relax, to be less constrained, some new and often radical reality could emerge. Realizing that reality is, largely, in the Eye of The Beholder, I have learned to pay closer attention to my own perceptions, acknowledge and honor them, and not give them more power than they deserve.