I was twelve when I first met the quiet thief called parallax.
In a dusty school laboratory, we were told to measure the length of a metal rod using a steel ruler. My friend proudly announced “10.2 cm.” I got “9.8 cm.” The teacher sighed, took the ruler, placed it flat, put her eye directly above the endpoint, and declared: “Exactly 10.0 cm.”Same ruler. Same rod. Same light. Different angles. Different truths.
That day I learned a lesson I keep re-learning:
Truth is not only the yardstick; it is also how you hold it and how you look through it.The Sideways GlanceMost of our errors in life are parallax errors.We measure people from the side instead of from above.
We measure events from our own tilted standpoint.
We measure God, love, success, failure, justice, history, everything, while standing at an angle.The endpoint drifts.
Sometimes we come up short.
Sometimes we overshoot.
Rarely do we hit the true mark.Nations do it.
Lovers do it.
Journalists, judges, parents, preachers, Twitter warriors; we all do it.
We swear the rod is 9.8 cm because that is what it looks like from where we stand.The Perpendicular PostureThe first correction is mechanical: sight straight down.Get your eye directly above the mark.
Remove yourself from the oblique.
Stand in the place where your shadow falls exactly on the thing you are measuring.In other words:
Suspend your angle long enough to see the thing as it is, not as your position makes it convenient to see.This is harder than it sounds.
The ego hates the perpendicular.
It prefers the flattering slant.The Prism of RefractionBut even the perpendicular eye is not enough.Light bends when it leaves air and enters the denser medium of our humanity.
Our lenses are warped by trauma, privilege, fear, desire, ideology, grief, hope.So the ancients, and the scientists who followed them, placed a correcting prism in the path of the beam.Not to create rainbows.
To straighten the ray.Humility is that prism.
Mercy is that prism.
The willingness to say “I might be wrong” is that prism.
Love; real love; is the finest optical correction ever devised.Only when the light passes through that second medium does the mark land exactly where it belongs.A Prayer for MeasurersMay we lay the steel rule of Truth flat against the world.
May we climb the small ladder of detachment until our eye hangs directly above the thing we judge.
And may we have the courage to place the prism of humility over the pupil of our soul,
so the bent light of our seeing is unbent before it reaches the heart.
Only then will the measurement and measured become the same length,
without remainder,
without distortion,
without parallax.
Only then will we finally see 10.0 cm
and know, in our bones,
that it has been 10.0 all along.
That day I learned a lesson I keep re-learning:
Truth is not only the yardstick; it is also how you hold it and how you look through it.The Sideways GlanceMost of our errors in life are parallax errors.We measure people from the side instead of from above.
We measure events from our own tilted standpoint.
We measure God, love, success, failure, justice, history, everything, while standing at an angle.The endpoint drifts.
Sometimes we come up short.
Sometimes we overshoot.
Rarely do we hit the true mark.Nations do it.
Lovers do it.
Journalists, judges, parents, preachers, Twitter warriors; we all do it.
We swear the rod is 9.8 cm because that is what it looks like from where we stand.The Perpendicular PostureThe first correction is mechanical: sight straight down.Get your eye directly above the mark.
Remove yourself from the oblique.
Stand in the place where your shadow falls exactly on the thing you are measuring.In other words:
Suspend your angle long enough to see the thing as it is, not as your position makes it convenient to see.This is harder than it sounds.
The ego hates the perpendicular.
It prefers the flattering slant.The Prism of RefractionBut even the perpendicular eye is not enough.Light bends when it leaves air and enters the denser medium of our humanity.
Our lenses are warped by trauma, privilege, fear, desire, ideology, grief, hope.So the ancients, and the scientists who followed them, placed a correcting prism in the path of the beam.Not to create rainbows.
To straighten the ray.Humility is that prism.
Mercy is that prism.
The willingness to say “I might be wrong” is that prism.
Love; real love; is the finest optical correction ever devised.Only when the light passes through that second medium does the mark land exactly where it belongs.A Prayer for MeasurersMay we lay the steel rule of Truth flat against the world.
May we climb the small ladder of detachment until our eye hangs directly above the thing we judge.
And may we have the courage to place the prism of humility over the pupil of our soul,
so the bent light of our seeing is unbent before it reaches the heart.
Only then will the measurement and measured become the same length,
without remainder,
without distortion,
without parallax.
Only then will we finally see 10.0 cm
and know, in our bones,
that it has been 10.0 all along.