Three Life Experiencing Dimensions

Among all the life and the world I have experienced to date, I feel our experiences including living, reading, doing have three dimensions, which, if well looked after, contribute to an enriching and fulfilling life:

Ways of seeing

Ways of seeing is manifested through all forms, be it making, recording, or feeling. The ability for the mind and eyes to experience the world in our life can be enriched or hindered by our ability to see.

Don McCullin said that when he takes a photography, above all he uses his eyes, his mind and heart. The equipment itself matters less other than the quality difference. He would take the same photographs irrespective the equipment he uses.

Lots of artists that I come across or studied share the same outlook. The reason we can often recognise the maker of a piece of work is because the person behind it is coherent. Such as sculptures by Barbara Hepworth. No matter she used wood, marble, or metal, her work reflected her zest for the landscape and the era she resided in. Her ability of seeing revealed and informed the shape, form, and meanings of her work.

Knowledge of the world

Lots of things can not be seen, but can be experienced through attaining the knowledge. A product designer, for example, when passing a door, he/she often invariably sees more than just a door. if his/her focus was on experience design, he/she would be able to translate the activity of passing a door into aspects of user experience, such as door slide direction, push/pull, is the signifier clear such as the shapes of the door handle for those who use the door ( i.e to push, pull, or slide) , and the door material and whether it correlates right amount of affordance with the user who experience that door. The texture of the world often comes from attaining that knowledge, from that knowing.

The spiritual dimension

A day will always be just a day without the spiritual dimension. In Stray Birds by Tagore, the poet wrote ‘be still, my heart, these trees are prayers.’ Or in The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, who told a story of a boy, a shepherd, travelling through the desert to understand the universe of the language, to read omens, signs, and to learn to listen to his heart for comprenhending the world. Or in the book Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, how the writer, as a victim of the concentration camp could survive had lots to do with the mind, the spiritual belief there is more beyond the drudgery and hardship of the life in the camp.

For me life will be very hollow, if our ways of seeing, knowledge of the world, and the spiritual dimension are not nurtured. My own experience of a life long reading and moving to the creative realm are my ways to see more, experience more, and to reach the spiritual dimension of experiencing the world.

Like what was said in the hauntingly beautiful book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelo, in the desert the universe is contained in every sand. When we see more we can experience more; when we know more we will realise that what can be seen is only but a shadow, and it’s often what we don’t see makes up of what we are.

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