I used to brag about my perfect vision, the smug kind of 20/20 that made me feel immune to squinting and arm’s-length menus. The kind that enabled me to achieve perfect scores on rifle ranges at Fort Jackson, Fort Gordon and Fort Bragg. Then, almost overnight, the small print slipped into fog, and now I’m the proud owner of bifocals.
It’s a humbling accessory, a quiet reminder that perception isn’t a fixed lens — it’s a living thing, constantly adjusting. The world didn’t change. My way of seeing it did.
That adjustment is the story of almost everything I believe.
Take Bob Dylan, who, to my mind, was the first true punk rocker.
Not because he wore leather or snarled into a microphone, but because he committed the ultimate rebellious act: He plugged in. When he electrified his sound and rattled the folk purists, he wasn’t just changing instruments; he was changing perspective. He was saying that fidelity to a form matters less than fidelity to a feeling.
He upended expectations, drew boos and cheers in equal measure, and — intentionally or not — set the tone for a new counter-culture. It wasn’t about being louder; it was about refusing to see music the same way just because that’s how it had always been seen.
I’ve lived a softer version of that rebellion at the dinner table. As a child, I treated onions like villains — the eye-watering plant that ruined otherwise good meals.
Somewhere along the way, my palate grew up. Now I chase the sweetness coaxed from an onion left to sweat low and slow, marveling at how something once offensive became essential. It wasn’t the onion that changed; it was the story I told myself about it.
The same shift happened with politics. I was raised to view the socio-political world through a particular frame, clean lines separating right from wrong, us from them.
But life — messy, generous, inconvenient life — kept handing me people whose experiences didn’t fit my inherited map. I haven’t abandoned the values that shaped me, but I’ve learned that perspective is a moving camera, not a locked tripod. When you pull back, widen the frame, you notice details that transform the scene.
Lately, when the public square sounds like a thousand amplifiers feeding back at once, I think about fruit salad. It’s a simple recipe for living together: distinct flavors, intact and shining, tossed in a bowl with just enough citrus to keep things fresh.
No single fruit has to dominate; in fact, the dish fails when one does. Strawberries don’t become blueberries, and nobody asks the pineapple to tone it down. The magic is in the mix.
Perception works the same way. Each new lens — bifocals, a Dylan record, caramelized onions, a conversation that complicates your certainty — adds another note to the bowl. Individually, we’re sharp or sweet, tart or mellow. Together, we become something generous and surprising.
In an age obsessed with division, it’s worth remembering the quiet truth hiding in a humble dessert: We still have more in common than we think. We are not our first tastes, nor our first frames. We are the sum of what we’re willing to add, and the grace to let others keep their flavor while we share a meal.