Perceptual Reality

Earth's population reached 1 billion persons in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in '59, 4 billion in '74 and 5 billion in late '86. And on October 12th, 1999, Earth's population surpassed 6 billion. The number of passengers on Spaceship Earth has doubled (from 3 billion – 1959, to 6 billion – 1999,) in 40 short years. But we're not discussing population growth today, I'm just opening your eyes to perceptual reality. The cognoscenti of Magical Worlds will remember a brief discussion of perceptual reality at the beginning of class. “Each of you will sit in this room for 3 days and hear the same information presented in precisely the same way. But you'll leave here having had an entirely different experience from the persons on your left and your right. You will connect different dots, have different epiphanies, make different associations. Objective reality will be the same for each of you. But your perceptual realities will be yours alone.” There are 525,948.766 minutes in a year. This means that each minute, the 6 billion of us experience a collective 11,408 years of perceptual reality. And each day we live a collective 16,427,455 years. Given that we lived nearly sixteen and a half million years yesterday, it seems like one of us would've figured out how to end poverty, crime and war, doesn't it? (Personally, I was really busy, so I was counting on you.) Today's illustration is an image of the famous mime, Marcel Marceau, superimposed over a photo of Earth with snapshots of women and men on its surface. To the right is the cover of Paul Finley's awesome 14 Windows guitar CD. You, reader, saw the same image as 30,000 other subscribers, but your perception was yours alone. You may have been confused by the image, amused by it, intrigued by it, or mildly or strongly disturbed by it. Perhaps you even saw a symbolic statement being made. I did not intend one. Perceptual reality is yours alone. Every door of opportunity begins as a window in your mind. Look through that window of imagination and glimpse a world that could be, someday. Keep looking… Be patient… And watch it grow into a door of Opportunity through which you might pass into an entirely different future. Opportunity never knocks. But it hangs thick in the air all around you. You breathe it unthinking, and dissipate it with your sighs. Opportunity never knocks. It appears, flickering, like faulty neon at a nondescript fork in the road. Opportunity never knocks. It whispers, a tickle in your distracted mind. So what are you going to do? Will you sleep, unaware of the miracles that need your assistance, or will you open your eyes, look through that window, and begin doing what only you can do? Roy H. Williams