I am and have been in love since the age of 3 with an object which in my view is the most beautiful thing ever created by man. When I was young it fascinated me by its power to enchant, in my growing years it had the power to lift my soul and symbolized my view on how to live my life. At some point in our adults lives when we are handed out our share of trials and tribulations we all start to wonder what it all really means? We start to shape our own unique philosophy regarding life. And here too this object became by mentor.
You must be wondering if this is some miracle object or perhaps it’s a marvel of technology or that it must be really expensive to be able to do so much. The answer is no, no and no. It’s a humble Kaleidoscope.
Whenever someone asks me what present I would like my immediate response is “a kaleidoscope”, not many have been successful so far in fulfilling this very simple wish, except one who gave me a high tech version of it, nice - but didn’t have the same magic as the old fashioned one. It’s not anybody’s fault that they couldn’t get one, sadly they are not easily available anymore.
As a child it transported me into a fairyland of possibilities and amazement. One never knows what they will see when they pick up a kaleidoscope, a change of light, a turn of the wrist and viola! Today when everything is functional, or fast or obvious, innocence and wonderment is fast disappearing from the experience of childhood, perhaps we need to reintroduce them at our toy stores.
My dream retirement project would be to make kaleidoscopes and hand them out to children for free. I would like them to learn to appreciate beauty just for beauty’s sake alone not because there is a utility attached to it. Perhaps then on my death bed I can look back and say ‘life well lived’.
The capacity of the ordinary to produce extraordinary results is perhaps central to the kaleidoscope ‘philosophy’. The bits and pieces inside the tube are unremarkable in themselves, you can throw in anything you want – broken glass bangles, some tinsel, buttons, beads etc. absolutely anything but the result is always truly magnificent. Alchemy indeed! It is an optical illusion of course, but then aren’t our points of views and paradigms just that, our own illusions? We can shake the tube and conclude that there are only some broken objects inside it or we can look through the peep-hole and witness magic. Life is what we make of it, only our point of view needs to change.
The slightest turn of the scope changes the image completely. How reassuring to know that even when life is at its lowest most depressing point, a slight turn of destiny, a single event can change the entire scene. Everything is transient and in flux. For me a kaleidoscope is hope in a tube.
Another lesson I learnt from this humble object was the importance of boundaries. It is the reflection from triangular walls of mirrors inside the kaleidoscope which creates the symmetry of patterns. Take away the boundaries and there is no reflection, no design – just bits and pieces. In the same manner we need to keep within our boundaries if we are to maintain our symmetry, our personality. These boundaries are not just those of ethics and morality but perhaps even more importantly our ego boundaries. These are the boundaries which define who we are and what we are not. They define our likes, our dislikes our emotional and psychological limits. In short our ego boundaries are really our non-physical selves. Whenever we deliberately breach our ego boundaries in order to accommodate others and make compromises in life we lose our symmetry. Hence good or bad, noble or shallow, strong or weak we need to first accept our selves as we are. We can expand our boundaries but we cannot fragment them and expect joy and beauty to be the outcome.
So you see a little cardboard cylinder contains vital life lessons, if only we take the trouble to actually look at it.
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