Look around your house from wherever you’re sitting and imagine what it would look like to someone seeing it for the first time. Maybe you invited them over for tea. Maybe you’re hosting the neighborhood garden club. Maybe you died and it was your long estranged relatives who came by to put affairs in order.
What would they think? What kind of a person would they deduce you were from looking at your living space and your belongings, your kitchen?
Just a thought experiment; I just did it. My house is kind of messy, that might be the first thing they notice, but full of interesting things. From left to right: a weed wacker, a bike, a very large TV, a stuffed bear sitting on the floor, 3 small tables with assorted items including 2 strangely shaped bowls, a small African doll made out of cloth and beads, a TV remote, two TV remotes, bicycle chain lubricant in a plastic bottle, a flashlight, reading glasses.
Books are piled on the floor around the spot where I sit in the old tilting, swiveling TV chair on the sun porch thinking about this. More books are piled on makeshift tables made out of cardboard boxes. It feels like a nest.
I guess that would inform them, after they got past the small forest of aloe vera plants on the front porch.
We rarely see ourselves thru other people’s eyes, though it would be a good practice just for the entertainment value and the wisdom one might gain not to mention the empathy.
I guess I’m feeling empathy for myself in this moment as if I were that long lost relative who had come to see where I lived and put things in order.
I’m an interesting guy. I had my life. I tried to do good. These are the feelings I’m having for myself right now.
I wish I had known you more.