Perception 👅

Trying to get the popcorn out from between my teeth.

The distance in one’s mouth
Feels larger than without,
As it’s explored by one’s exclusive tongue.

No landmark, no roof
To guide its monofoot
Except the tooth who, in his cave, is king.

Explanation

Keeping it brief this week.

“Perception” is about how things in your mouth, when explored by your tongue, feel larger than they actually are.

But what is large, and what is small? If you pick a little grain of rice out of your teeth with your finger, it looks tiny. When you are trying to dislodge it with your tongue it feels huge.

In the second stanza, the tongue is a lone explorer, inspecting its constrained world. It is like a chained spectator in Plato’s allegory of the cave. The tongue does not know that there is a wider world outside the mouth, and therefore the inside of the mouth is its entire universe. The largest thing in the mouth is the largest thing the tongue can know!

Lesson

Size is relative! This applies to events as well as objects. 

Take an event in your life that is of gigantic importance to you. Relatively, it may not be a big deal from the perspective of, say, all human history. Yet its importance is still gigantic, because its importance is relative to your perception of the event.

It is important to remember that what is large to you is valid, but also that having a historical sense is worthwhile. If anything, recognizing that your problems (while still valid) are not the worst problems in recorded history can be comforting. This recognition has more than once freed my mind from worry and allowed me to focus on actually solving my (relatively large) problem.

Scansion (poem stats)

Six lines

Stanzas: two tercets

Two lines of trimeter followed by one line of pentameter in each stanza.

Rhyme scheme: AAB CC(slant)B(hard slant)