Within the Field of Our Own Light

Perspective is both our anchor and our confinement. It grants shape to the world, but it also builds the frame through which that world must be seen. Each of us stands inside our own single field of experience— formed by memory, by temperament, by influence of the stories we’ve been told and taught.

Our vision is partial, limited. We see only within the range our bodies allow. Butterflies perceive spectrums of ultraviolet that exist beyond our human sight. Bees, birds, even some fish navigate worlds lit in hues we’ll never name. Their reality is not more or less real than ours, only different. We live inside our own wavelength, mistaking its limits for truth.

In clinic, I think of this often. Someone might arrive angry or feeling stuck, explaining that intense emotions appear without reason— I see the Liver calling for movement after a long period of restraint. Another may be struggling with years of insomnia— with years, too, of working a job that conflicts with their values, of living in a pattern that quietly drains the Heart’s fire. The body keeps its own record of misalignment. The heart cannot rest when the spirit feels misplaced. Moments like this reveal how inseparable the body and our story truly are— how symptoms or discomforts often speak in languages we haven’t yet learned to translate.

Both of our perspectives— the patient’s from the inside, mine from the outside— are true. Each offers part of the whole. The danger lies in mistaking any single view for the full picture. The risk lies in believing that our way of seeing is the only option being offered.

Awareness allows the view to move. Compassion allows it to stay fluid. Without compassion, awareness may harden into judgment— of self, of others, of the process itself. With it, spaciousness. When we notice not just that we perceive but how we perceive, something loosens. A small space opens between observer and observation. Where rigidity of mind once held, a current of curiosity begins to flow.

Over time, I’ve come to think of my own perspective as practice. In medicine, in art, in conversation— what I believe I know is only one rendering of a shifting reality. Every diagnosis, every brushstroke, every act of understanding passes through the filters of my own experience.

To remember that is to recover and nurture humility. Not freedom from subjectivity, but gentleness within it. A willingness to let another’s world be celebrated alongside my own without insisting alignment into my own limited perspective.

Awareness in this aspect is not about seeing more; it’s about remembering that we never see from nowhere.

Perspective, like breath or pulse, moves. It contracts, expands, and turns toward what it can hold.

I am learning, and relearning, to meet each instance with compassion, to stay curious about what I see, how I see it and why my thoughts have been led here. Within that soft rotation, understanding becomes less a possession that I seek to have, and more a relationship I choose to lean in to.