"Once you can name something you have power over it."
I'm not sure who said this during class, if it was in one of the videos or came from the reading, but this just clicked with me. I think of this in terms of my car. Yes, my car. I am by no means a "car person." I don't really know one model from the next. I do know the basic manufacturers: Chevy, Ford, Pontiac (sadness that it's gone now), Olds (again, sadness), Toyota, and so on. I never knew how little I paid attention to cars until I bought my first decent car after finishing my undergrad degree. I bought my dad's old car, a 1998 Oldsmobile Regency silvery/tan. By this time Oldsmobile had been out of business for a couple years, but this was still a pretty decent car. As soon as it was mine I saw them EVERYWHERE! I couldn't drive to the grocery store without seeing at least one other car that looked exactly like mine. It was insane, and don't get me started about finding it in the mall parking lot! It was nuts, but I had never "known" a specific Olds before. They were all alike to me. This whole thing was a little crazy, but I thought "hey it's a popular car." Wrong, it was just a car like any other. Last year my poor Olds was "killed" by an accident, no one was hurt. My dad helped me find a "new" used car. I ended up with a 2000 (I think) Buick Lesabre, I like full size cars if you hadn't caught that yet! I started driving it around and after about 2 weeks I noticed my car was everywhere!
This car is green, which I thought was a lot less common! But, my next door neighbor has the EXACT same car right down to the color! Why did I never see this before? Because I had no image of a Buick Lesabre, I just knew "Buick." I couldn't name it, I couldn't find one in a crowd. Now I see at least one EVERY day...This is just one example of how perceptions change and affect everyday life. I have a friend who is an artist. It always amazes me how differently we see things. While watching the first video in class, the man with the interesting art, I thought about my friend. She sees thing differently similar to the way the speaker saw things differently. I was very impressed with how he could make regular items look extraordinary! I don't often think about my friends art, it's something she does because it makes her happy. It's not something she gets paid for or purposely shares with the world. But she shares it with her friends and family, and her art makes me look at things differently. Sometimes we influence each other. While taking photos for a class I took a picture of her reflection in her tuba, she is also a musician. She loved the picture so much that she made it into a self portrait for one of her classes. It is really neat, we both have a copy of the picture, and I love to see her portrait up on her wall when I visit!
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