Same Room, Same Time, Same Chicken Painting

“We forge gradually our greatest instrument for understanding the world – introspection. We discover that humanity may resemble us very considerably – that the best way of knowing the inwardness of our neighbors is to know ourselves.”
– Walter Lippmann

Two people painted their chickens backwards.

At least that was my perception.

Photo: Diana Francis, The Artful Lawyer, A Fine Gallery Inc.

I was a member of a painting class, each with the identical task: to recreate the example chicken painting.

Each of us had the identical objective experience. We were in the same room at the same time and witnessed the identical incident: the teacher previously painted a chicken as an example and, in our presence, painted a new version in stages for us to model. We all studied the same example painting and we all watched the method by which the teacher created a new painting from the example.

Except for minor variations due to differences in skill, at the end of the two-hour class, I expected our chickens to look alike.  More specifically, I expected others’ chickens to look like mine. I assumed others were seeing what I was seeing.

I was astounded by the differences in our paintings.

We read stories of police interviewing eye witnesses and hearing widely varied descriptions of how people looked, even how many people were present. But that’s about how memory works. In contrast, in the painting class, we were present together in the very moments the event occurred.

I have counted on introspection and its resultant self-knowledge to be the means by which I could know and connect with others.  I have treasured the conception that the more I know myself, the more I am part of the great universality of humanity. I ardently seek contact with my inner chicken.

If I want to know others, however, the row of chicken paintings says self-knowledge is insufficient.

I felt crushed. Knowing me doesn’t insure I know you?! Am I separate then, cut off from humanity by my individual uniqueness?! Wah, an existential crisis in chicken painting class!

And then I felt awed, uplifted, moved. I looked at all the earnest people attempting to  express on the outside what’s uniquely inside them and I was again profoundly part of the wholeness of humanity.

How many team, business, committee and board meetings have I attended where bright, well-meaning members struggled to understand each other and reach consensus, especially when conflict arose? No wonder we struggled!  We were all speaking on behalf of our own chicken paintings! We had good intentions in common, yet held very different perceptions of the issue at hand.

Describing something as “backwards” is a judgment of directional wrongness with my perception as the compass.

At the next meeting I attend, I am going to envision the members holding up chicken paintings as they speak.  I will seek to understand the inwardness of my neighbors, especially those who paint their chickens another way around from mine.

. . . . .

In the photo taken at The Artful Place, A Fine Studio, from right to left, I am second, smiling, loving my chicken painting.