How to Draw

The Last Psychiatrist just released an article that beautifully articulates a point I’ve made weakly several times in my writing.
The point is essentially that we project so much of our own meaning onto the world that we forget to see what’s actually there.
… Edwards calls this the “tyranny of the symbol system” because it dictates to us, forces our hand to draw symbols rather than what we see.
But it isn’t simply that we draw using these symbols; we perceive using them as well. I don’t bother to see the actual shape of a head because it was never important to; in order to see it for what it really is, I need to practice my perception. It is easy for me to see a news story as a manufactured construct, but it never occurred to me I was seeing every day objects wrong. My tilted computer monitor isn’t a rectangle; it’s a trapezoid.
You’ll never make the huge breakthroughs you want in your life if you don’t teach yourself to see what’s really there.
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