Are you a bird or a fish?

Photo by Marian Crawford, www.mariancrawfordgallery.com

Congrats to Sonja Gissy, winner of the Week 2 photo caption contest; see her winning caption beneath the photo below right.
 
At left is the new photo for week 3, an amazingly beautiful scene by nature photographer Marian Crawford. Takes my stress level down a notch just by gazing at it!

But before I remind you of the contest guidelines, I want to share an interesting observation about last week’s photo and entries.

 Okay, stop reading for a moment and glance down at the heron and fish photo below. Now, with whom did you first identify – the bird or the fish? The conqueror or the conquered? The one whose needs were met or the one who apparently needs a miracle to survive?

It didn’t occur to me until Spouse pointed out that almost exactly half of the caption entries were from the bird’s point of view and half from the fish’s.

Hmm. I wonder if our carefully camouflaged underlying perspective of life is inadvertently unearthed when we view a subjective scene such as this. Beneath all the political correctness and say-what-I-shouldness, do we really believe the glass is half empty or half the calories?

Could those half-and-half responses somehow mean we unintentionally impose our victorious versus fighting-a-losing-battle perspectives of our own lives onto that in which we come in contact? Or does it mean nothing at all? Is our identification with the bird or the fish totally random?

When fate has you by the neck, don’t forget to look up!

I’d love to hear what do you think. Are you a bird or a fish? How is your life colored by your underlying perspective? And how did it get that way?

In the meantime, while you contemplate the meaning of life (or maybe simply that herons have to eat for heaven’s sake!), I’ll remind you to send in your captions for week 3 to me at deboracoty@gmail.com. Each week’s winner will be entered in a drawing for some swell prizes (scroll down to last week’s post to find out more).

Thank you SO much for entering – it’s been a pure pleasure seeing your great ideas! 

(P.S. The 5 judges had a tough time choosing a winner but Sonja’s entry finally eeked it out. Congrats!)