How did you perceive the world?

I saw the world through the eyes of a child who believed all the religious nonsense of my Mother, who believed the most outlandish things; things that makes a lot of what is in the bible seem sane.

The world was a place full of demons and angels, and God hid around every corner, just waiting for you to screw up, so he could send the Devil into the game to drag you screaming into Hell.

When I was a very young man, I believed that the puppets on Sesame Street were real. I wondered what it would be like to visit the depths of the garbage can where Oscar the Grouch lived and I was curious about what Big Bird and Mr. Snuffleupagus did when the cameras weren’t rolling.

I was ‘in love’ with Gilligan from Gilligan’s Island. I cried copious tears when he ‘died’ during a dream sequence. It took my mother quite a while to convince me that he wasn’t real, and not really dead.

On a darker note, I believed that the world was a hellish place full of horrific experiences. For a long time, I was right. Then I stood up to my abuser and saved myself. It’s all good, now.

@augustlan Good for you!!

I never was never really thrilled about my life and my world so I made up another and an alternate persona as well that world was detailed down to a T so I perceived the actual word as just a space for people to make up their own awesome individual worlds (kinda like the adventures of shark boy and lava girl if you’ve ever seen it) It took me till I was like 11 or 12 to realize that I was the only one my age doing that. But that didn’t stop me and I continue to live my life that way. So I legitimately thought for a while imaginary friends were built in/ assigned to every person.

I use to think that everything that happened on T.V. was really happening at that very moment. I had no concept of time difference around the world. If it was two o clock on my watch, it was two o clock all over the world. I also had no idea that other countries were so far away. I literally thought we could just drive anywhere in a matter of a couple hours.

I use to think that the Power Rangers were real. But there were a lot of show that I thought were real too, and yes, I thought Eureka’s Castle was too. To me, everything that was good was real, not the bad.

I saw the world as a cold and cruel place, with nobody to be my friend. I faced being bullied and descriminated every day, and most often cried when I got home.

I used to thing about my self that my live gone be special.My focus at the live was as one day I get my self above the law.It was my charakter to claim high.Does it happend—Who knows.It seem that it was just an childehood dream.(nice one)

I perceived the world through the eyes of a child who saw the good in everything. Life was full of joy, and it was up to you to find it. And except for the random emo stint, I still see it in pretty much the same way, like a happy silly child.

What other better way is there to perceive the world?

It was a fridge full of food. A bed to sleep in. Clothing always there. A smiling face, always a potential friend.
Waking up in the morning meant going out to play and going to bed meant… Well going to bed.

All of which totally transparent and unaware of how those things were provided.

Normatively, through the sensorium.

I remember that I once thought that I was the only person that could see color.

Yeah, I know…

@Sampson lol. that makes me think of the book The Giver.

Does everyone remember a time when they saw the world in a magical way? I don’t remember such a time in my life. That doesn’t mean that it never happened. Just that I don’t remember it if it did happen.

@daloon The world still is magical. You just have to know how to see it in that way.

In the Summer of 1952, my mother sent me to live with my aunt Betty and cousin Maryanne in a one-room shack in Monterrey, California. We all slept in the same bed and had AM radio for entertainment, besides the make believe worlds we made for ourselves with chairs, sheets and flashlights. My cousin used to think that Mexicans didn’t really know how to talk and were just faking it. So we would “talk Mexican” too.

There was a little girl my cousin’s age who lived in a trailer on the property, and a 13-year old boy who lived in a house. He would play secret naked touching games with both of us in a fort we made out of an old refrigerator box. We all found these games very exciting in a strange forbidden way. The boy’s mother was very religious and would make him wear a dress and sit on the front porch whenever he wet the bed. We couldn’t even imagine what she would do if she found out about what he actually was getting up to.

There was a garden on the property that had huge dahlias and sunflowers the size of dinner plates. It also had zucchini, squash, tomatoes, parsley, garlic, oregano and corn, each of which gave off a thick distinctive aroma that you never found in city stores. In fact, the air was thick with the smell of all manner of things, the fruit and fish canneries, the sea, the grass, the chicken coop and the rich black soil itself. If we had to poop, we would do it right in the garden and wipe our butts with the leaves of a fuzzy light green plant.

Time seemed to move at a different pace depending on the day and time of day. It was generally slow and languid; but it would also seem to idle and even go backward as perception and memory seemed to flow into one another. Sometimes time would seem to tunnel through to a different century. In the morning, while we were waiting for the room to get warm enough to get up, we would watch dust motes caught in a shaft of light. At other times, the crickets seemed to have a hypnotic effect. Snakes and lizards would laze in the hot yellow sun. Huge brown garden spiders would build their thick silvery webs while we watched. We would marvel at how you could put a cat in a pillow case and if you showed it to a dog, the dog would sniff it, and the cat would hiss. How did the cat know?

Somehow, we seemed to be living in nature, not as people do now. Everything was up close and personal. We had no awareness of social status and only a vague sense of the pathology around us, and none at all of any within us.

Lovely answer, @Zuma! You are good at description (I’d call it a gift, but I’ll bet you worked hard to get it). I loved the smells paragraph!

re: ”...I really thought my life along with everyone and everything in it was just a puppet show being controlled by giants.”

It isn’t?