Perspective: Now You See it, Now You Don't

Douglas Adams in a speech in 1998 in told his audience in Cambridge, "There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world."

I rememember the year I felt old. The year I turned 27. It was the first age I rememembered my mother being. I hadn't known her age until I was 10 and she was 27. When I turned 27 I was, in my eyes, my mothers age. This meant I was old. So I wasn't phased by turning 30 or 40. 

Today my daughter turned 27. It made me smile to make the link. I still don't feel as old as I did. Perspective is a funny thing. I continue to smile at the idea.

Adams (1998) gave this example of the 'oddities' of perspective: 

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be..."

This made me smile.

As he tells us, "...we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions."

Smiling is one of them :-) 

 Adams, D. (1998) 'Is There An Artificial God?', Speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge