The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia was my favorite museum as a child. Please, don’t be impressed: I did not necessarily like or frequent museums. They seemed tiring, so much standing and shuffling without a destination. How can exercise that is so easy tire a person so quickly? My mind couldn’t understand what my body knew all too well. A museum was usually less interesting than the bus ride to it. By the time a boy my age reached the top of the building’s first staircase, he had been told not to run, shout, jump, or talk at least a dozen times. Rules sapped enthusiasm as fast as kryptonite immobilized Superman.
But not at the Franklin Institute. There were things to do at the Franklin, exhibits to touch, limits to test. You could walk through a beating heart. You could shove a steel ball and watch what happened to the other objects lined up behind it. You could stand in front of a painting about illusions and watch the light in your eyes buzz.
“I don’t see it.” She’s right there. “I only see the old lady.” Look, look. Don’t you see her? She’s right there.
We were exploring the optical illusion section. Hanging in the air were canvases with pen and ink lines that seemed to sizzle. Waves of black and white forms disoriented the sense of balance. A drawing of a hook-nosed old lady was supposed to look like a beautiful woman if you turned your head and eyes in the right way. To a young boy who could only see the hag, it was an embarrassing challenge. Some of my classmates said they saw the profile of a beautiful woman. My eyes could only decipher the big nose and jutting chin of a crone who seemed straight out of a bad fairy tale.
Look! someone told me. Just look! She’s right there.
Right there. Beauty hung before me and all I could see was its opposite. The story of my life. Perfect
So I stood there. And I willed that princess to come into view. I focused and I focused. I narrowed my eyes, turned my face, clenched my fists, and burned a laser beam of intent at the elderly bulbous nose that dominated my consciousness. You will become beautiful. You WILL become beautiful. I worked hard to see the metamorphosis. When it still failed to occur, I almost faked my ability to see it. An eight year-old boy does not easily admit to friends that he cannot see the exposed long neck of a beautiful woman and risk a bus ride home filled with jibes about how he prefers ugly old ladies to mysterious young women.
Gently, someone helped. I don’t recall who it was. There is simply an echo in my memory of someone my age, a girl I think, quietly standing beside me. I can almost hear that voice suggest how, if I imagined that the old nose was a chin and then let my view go soft, I might, yes, maybe I could see that the right eyelashes of the old woman were the left eyelashes of –
A princess. I saw her! She had not been there. No. She had not existed, there had only been her opposite, and then, in an instant, she had always been there, youth shadowed by its future, the hag perhaps the princess years later following decades of regal wonder and majesty. Before me eyes, the crone transformed herself into an elderly queen. I could see both young and old. I sensed beauty stretched across the spectrum of a single life time.
I did not use those words when I re-identified the crooked nose of the old lady as the exposed jawline and neck of the graceful, young woman. First I had to prove to friends that I really saw her. Once convinced, they were off to the next challenge. Then I stayed behind, for a moment without boundaries, practicing my newfound vision. Over an over, I made my internal viewfinder flip the perspectives, back and forth, like a new form of exercise, a training for my brain so that it would not lose its ability to see the averted gaze of youth hidden behind the sagging profile of age. To this day, I still enjoy the drill. It feels good to appreciate the benefits of a nimble consciousness. It is reassuring to experience the freedom of an open mind.
It takes work. Labor. There is a myth in the modern human story that what we become is based on what we will to happen, that our successes in life are a direct result of our individual effort. You or I work. And so you or I succeed. While personal fortitude is often prerequisite to certain types of outcome, it is inadequate – necessary yet insufficient – for achievement of a higher order, for fulfillment of purpose beyond your or my aggrandizement of wealth and material goods. You and I are more than what you or I do alone. When we co-labor, when we co-labor-ate, so much more is possible.
Some things are so obvious – when we notice them. It can take work, however, to notice. There is labor involved in observation. I may think that my job is to do things alone, to reach insights independently, to make things happen for myself. Subsequently, if and when I taste accomplishment, I may misinterpret the experience as uniquely my own, perhaps even aspire to share my insights about perseverance and performance with you, offering you help in your own path. It is easy to mistake arrivals as evidence of individual effort. We miss opportunities for real progress when we overlook the destinies only possible through co-creation.
My boyhood ability to fully read the optical illusion at the Franklin Institute represents a simple yet sublime example of collaboration. Like the duality of the young and old woman, the beauty nestled within the mystery of this world is that we travel best when we journey together. Our collective actions manifest an emerging common purpose. Our co-labor offers new perspective on what is possible when we work as one.