perspective III

in chatting with an old friend today i remembered something my brother told me about when he was a little kid.  he said that before he could read, he would only see the yellow spaces around the red "s" of the superman seal - he never realized that the red formed an "s". i have been fascinated by this for a long time.

the moment we begin to learn our letters, we are trained to see them and put them together to make meaning of things. but like any training, it can potentially limit our abilities as well. most of us literate people would never look at the superman "s" (or something equivalent) and first see the shapes around the letter - our eye would directly be drawn to the letter we so readily recognize.

why is this interesting? i think that in general we are trained to see and understand things in certain ways. the more experience we have/life we live, the more this is true. this is what i love about kids and their ability to remain open to things.