On US1 with traffic, rain and no sunlight, the sky was filled with clouds that were as gray as the road. Though the faces of my fellow travelers told me that the bleakness of this day oppressed them, I looked up at the skies and realized how beautiful the grey skies were. My shift in perception made me see that the clouds were not lacking in color, but were filled with shades of grey. The different tones were like a composition of art that was not colorful but beautifully dull. I started to see other images in the greyness--warm blankets and foamy seas. I began to lose myself in the thick fluffy atmosphere of the clouds.
My thoughts then drifted to one day in art class when we were given an assignment to use the constraints of a shoe box, and create an environment inside so when you look through the cut hole on the side of the box, your perspective would shift and the box would seem bigger than it really was. I watched my peers use reflection or miniature things to give the illusion of a larger space, but I took a different approach. I created device through which light changes, shapes transform, the back-, mid- and foreground become one, and the world is not fixed: a kaleidoscope. The evolving patterns and sequences appeal to my vision of nature, my view of myself. I am, like everyone really, a “masterpiece” in the making. I begin as a sketch, or many sketches, and evolve into something greater than the pieces of my origin. No one ends up the way she expects. Like the transformation of the grey clouds into beautiful images, or the constrained box into an expanse of possibilities, I believe it is all about perspective. Our ideas change just like the way we want to execute our “dreams”.
So, here I sit, writing an essay for FSU, thinking about perspective and change and the future. Isn’t this what global awareness is about? Recognizing the same in the difference, finding beauty in the mundane, seeing shoe box worlds through kaleidoscopes and knowing that I can make a difference.