Points of View

In "Return of the Jedi", Obi-wan Kenobi tells Luke that many of the truths we cling to dependon our point of view. For me, this rings very true. I have a different outlook on life from many of the people I encounter, as does everybody, and I've found, over the years, that many things I thought were common knowledge, were not, while many things I knew nothing about were commonplace to others. That sort of point of view is an issue for everyone, and connects well with my last post, but lately I've been thinking about points of view on physical level, rather than experiencial. The anecdote I always like is of someone being confused by a strange geological formation which, from the air, turns out to be a giant footprint. Another example is Yellowstone National Park. For years geologists and volcanologists scoured the part for the caldera, or crater, of a volcano, and not until they got photos of the park taken from a sattellite did they realize that they hadn't seen the crater because it was some 40 miles across.
On the other hand, getting down on your belly and looking at what's goin on on the ground can also be enlightening. The movie Microcosmos is a great example of that. Watching interactions between insects, or seing a pheasant from an ant's point of view, as a gidzilla sized monster.
Even from out everyday standpoint, we miss things that someone who looks at the world differently sees right away. I know someone who spent half an hour in Harvard Square, watching a peregrine falcon eat a pidgeon in a tree while the crowds of people swirled around him, never looking up and seeing.
A teacher of mine once told of how he climbed a mountain with a visitors center at the top (there was a road too) and spent some time watching a giant tortoise that was kept in a pen up there. He said it was like the tortoise sat there, while a multitude of shapes went whizzing by; every so often, the tortoise would notice a big bright thing appear in the eastern sky, move overhead, and dissapear again. everything else moved too fast. After about five minutes, the tortoise noticed my teacher, and after another couple minutes, looked at him for a while, before going back to watching the sun.