Eye of the beholder

Those of you that know me know that I am a huge country music fan. I'm not however a Garth Brooks fan. So, when one of his songs accidentally happens to pop up on my iTunes playlist, I usually quickly skip it and move on to the next and hopefully better song.

However, a little while ago, a catchy little old school duet by him and Trisha Yearwood came on called In Another's Eyes. On first listen, I didn't think much of it. But once I started paying closer attention to the lyrics, I began to totally love the song and the message it was trying to say.

In another's eyes
I'm someone who
Loves her enough to walk away from you
I'd never cheat and I would never lie
In another's eyes, yeah

Although the song mostly deals with relationships and trust therein, the song got me thinking about how to different people, we are different things/roles. I guess a better way to say that, is that everyone has a different perspective on who and how we are. It's pretty amazing to me that every single person that I meet, even for a second, will forever have a unique opinion/perspective of me, and definition/description of me, my actions, and my personality.

And what is even more amazing to me, is that to each person, their own unique perspective of me is truth. It's all in the eye of the beholder. While it may be true for one person that I am a nice and caring person, it may also be true for someone else that has met me that I am a mean and heartless person.

I personally don't believe the latter to be true, but that is just my perspective of my self. And I guess the notion of self really is just that, another perspective.
There's really not much point to this blog, other than 1) to share what I think is a pretty interesting and possibly thought provoking idea, and 2) to remind us that even introverts like me, which typically spend so much time and energy looking inward need to remember that we are all connected in a pretty amazing way and that the external matters too.

I've been reading a really fascinating book called Buddha which is essentially a biography of the Buddha's life and spiritual journey. (I highly recommend the book) Pulling from the song and the book, I finally feel like I am starting to put it all together. Like some big spiritual jigsaw puzzle.

It's all just about being a good person and doing the right thing. It's pretty simple: when we do the right thing, we feel good. When we do bad things, we may not feel bad right away, but guilt or remorse almost always follow at some point. I think maybe we just have taken this really simple idea and made it really really complicated. And when you think about it, almost all of the many different religions in the world talk in some way about the notion of doing the right thing.

They just seem to be variations of the same idea. We even come fully equipped with our very own moral compass to guide us in deciding what is right from what is wrong. It just seems so simply obvious now.

If we live our life doing the right thing and doing good for others; refraining from selfish or unethical behavior, we will live peaceful and un-conflicted lives, die with a feeling of peacefulness, but live on forever in the infinite perspectives of us from everyone we meet along the way.

If you can't tell already, by no choice of my own, I seem to have ended up in the middle of Japan on a bit of a spiritual journey myself. These ideas are just that; ideas that have come to me along the way. So please totally disregard them if they are crazy, or please think about them and let me know what you think if they seem to make sense or be on the right track to something.

Peace out.