Change

At least in the world as seen through human eyes, there is no understanding of movement without the perception of stillness, no change without something unchanging. There are words that form a continuum and form a world in relation to other words: a forest, a house, the sky, a person, etc. and there are words that exist in opposition: left-right, day-night, black-white, soft-hard. These dual words do not exist without their counterparts — “hot” is nothing without “cold.” The contrasting relationship is everything, for a “hot” world without “cold” is unknown to the human mind. 

There are quite a few fundamental binaries in the human experience. One I find very interesting is that a subject doesn’t exist without an object. 

“I” does not exist without “me,” for the “I” (subject) is a consciousness that is conscious of itself — conscious of itself as “me,” that is, as an object. This self-awareness is, in fact, what makes human consciousness possible. This inner duality allows me to see myself from the outside and to reflect on my experiences and behavior. Thomas Ogden writes in What Alive Means: "One is able to have such experiences as reflecting on a choice one has made, regretting what one has said, not knowing why that never came to mind […] [This] subjectivity involves a complex relationship between oneself as subject (I) and oneself as object (me). One experiences an ever-shifting relationship (often a disjunction) between one's sense of who one is and the actual way one thinks, feels, and behaves." 

Another beautiful dual relationship is that of inside and outside. I find myself only by encountering the world outside me and being reflected by it. Naturally, if there were no outside, I would cease to exist — and if it did not reflect me, I would be nothing.

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[Photo above by Sergey Filimonov @videoprolab]

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