From a distance

Ever thought about what changes in perception from a distance? The mind responds to the altered perspective of simplified and reframed content, dealing with the retained features. When all the noise, the flood of details is gone, a form of liberation sets in, allowing recognition of things less in focus previously, things stressed by different scale. Emotion, urgency, immediate texture, or personal stake are replaced by proportion and consequences. The bigger picture of sorts becomes clearer… sometimes!

For we know that emotional intensity dwindles with psychological distance, an issue of importance to people. Time also does this, often called healing. As out of sight tends to be out of mind. But then people also think absence makes the heart grow fonder! Paradoxes entertain the human mind, sometimes play tricks on it.

Freud simplified psychic functioning to love and work. Loving and living thrive on different priorities. Much to consider along that route.

And then there is always another, still wider perspective. The psychological world built by human minds collectively grows dramatically in our time as knowledge of the physical world expands. Voyager 1, now at 25 billion km from earth and still reporting, suggests a different take on the importance of what happens on earth, as it does on what is important on earth. The James Webb Space Telescope now sends infrared pictures of what is too distant, faint and old for the Hubble Telescope to cope with. 

The distances among people's thinking are illustrated by even the short list of things mentioned here. People on the same planet rarely live in each other's pockets, often exist in different universes. Is that all bad? Maybe not! For maybe it's freedom. In war they are drawn together in the same, or opposing trenches.

As you ponder the scene from your next mountain top, consider for a moment what your grey-haired grandchildren will be on about on their mountain tops in just another five decades or so.