The Following essay was posted to my Blog on 18th October 2003...
Saturday, 18 October 2003
And now, the moment you've been waiting for...
Before you start reading this, you night want to grab a coffee, tea, hot chocolate, coke, or any other beverage (I’m sure you get the idea…), because this is going to be a long one. I think. If not, at least you get a coffee. Or tea. Or...
And if you’re not thirsty, you could always try a biscuit, or some chips, or even those little pineapple lollies. Me, I choose sushi rolls. But I digress...
I promised a couple of days ago that I would thrill you with an epic blog all about image. Perhaps my claims were somewhat grandiose, but here I will attempt to put down some of the thoughts that have been buzzing around my head like annoying little flies. They land for a brief moment, throw up into my brain, suck it back out, then resume their buzzing. Metaphorically speaking, I would like to swat those little suckers.
Got that coffee? Great. Down to business. You’ve been very patient. Thank you. No, I mean it. Thank you.
I’m still working out what exactly I mean by image, but bear with me. I hope it will come through in the end. I guess my thinking about image came up as I was walking last Sunday evening. I wasn’t walking anywhere in particular, and there was no particular reason for it – a combination of wanting to be out of the house, doing exercise, and finding some space to think. I like walking when it comes to thinking – my thoughts are usually good ones; I find it hard to be miserable when walking. Endorphins or similar? I don’t know.
Now that we’ve established that I was walking, we’ll move on to the thinking. As I moseyed on down the three-lane highway at the end of my street, I was spending a lot of time appreciating the various textures along the side of the footpath. Mostly they were trees, and flowers, and leaves, and bark, but also various stone/cement stuff, and bricks, and wood fences, and painted metal surfaces. I’m quite a tactile person, really. I enjoy the sense of touch. But, as I continued to pay attention to these things on the front edge of these properties, I began to notice the different appearance of each house, and it’s yard. They were all quite unique. They each projected their own unique image.
Now I could talk about what sort of people would live in each house, and go into stereotypes for each image, discussing ethnicity, age, socio-economic demographic, etc. But I’m fairly ignorant, so I’ll stick with what I know...
Some of these house and yards I liked, some I didn’t. Some of these properties I appreciated, some I didn’t. What surprised me though, was that some of the houses and yards I didn’t like the look of, I could still appreciate. It was like there were two levels of evaluation – one was taste, i.e. my likes and dislikes. But then there was this deeper level of, well, quality.
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has quite a bit to say about Quality. It’s a good read – highly recommended by me. Not that I agree wholeheartedly with everything he says, but it’s worth a read – it makes you think.
Back to my walk – I prefer a wilder, native-tree-type garden – I don’t really like conifers, and hedges and stuff. Topiary? No thanks. I’d rather a sprawling Grevillea bush. Or some native grass arrangements. And there were a few gardens that were a bit like that. There is however a difference between wild and shabby. Neglected. Uncared for.
Likewise there is a difference between order and sterility. Some of the gardens that were very, very neat, I could appreciate. They were tasteful (not my taste, but you know...) and obviously well maintained, and most likely loved by their owner. But some were just plain sterile. Despite the greenery, they were dead. There was no life in them.
So. What about image? I’m coming to that, but before I go there, I’d like to throw into this discourse a bit more of myself. These thoughts also came to me during my walk.
I feel better when I have a shave.
I feel better when my hair is behaving itself.
I feel better when I'm wearing clothes I like, and they’re clean, and if necessary, ironed as well.
I feel better when I’m at a healthy weight.
All these things could come under the heading of IMAGE.
I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word ‘image’ I have a negative response. I think of movie stars, and dieting, and phoney-ness, and showmanship; there seems to be an inherent shallowness to the word.
However, I think image is more than just appearances. It’s almost like image is the projection to the outside, of what is inside. But there is so much pressure in the world to get the outside right that our insides are often left neglected. Shabby.
So you get a whole lot of people saying you’ve got to look good on the outside, and everything else will be okay. Then you get a bunch of people in opposition to that saying that it doesn’t matter what you look like, appearances don’t matter, it’s the inside that counts.
Frankly, neither of those rings true for me.
Because what I look like matters to me. Sure, sometimes, I get a bit caught up in the whole body image thing – it’s hard not to. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m not even sure what I’m talking about.
It’s starting to come together for me when I think about value.
I don’t like that whole pursuit of ‘image’ as displayed in the mass media. Seems like a waste of time – shallow. But this idea of image as a projection, or more like a radiation, of the inner value, that’s kind of working for me a bit.. Now I’m not talking about judging the intrinsic worth of people based on their appearance - I think that's the mass media thingy's problem. But it’s like our image radiates what we value; how much we value ourselves included.
So I might not have the latest style in hair cut, or wear the most expensive shoes, or wear the latest fashions. Because I don’t value these things. I do however like to look neat and so I choose to get my hair cut when it starts to look shabby. I do choose clothes that I think look okay, that feel comfy, and so on.
How does this relate to the garden thing? I guess each of those gardens radiated what the owners value. Whether the ‘taste’ was appealing to me or not, I could sense when the owners valued their garden. (then again i could be totally wrong)
And if they didn’t value their garden, I reckon that’s when I picked up the un-‘quality’ vibe. Like the grass that was too long, with weeds all through the garden bed, fences falling apart. It wasn’t worth the owner’s time to fix these things.
And it’s like with the whole car thing. I guess people’s choice of car is an image thing too. Racy, expensive, stable, safe (Volvo), conservative (also Volvo), bogan (not so Volvo – more XD Falcon, VK Commodore, etc), sensible. I mean, car manufacturers play up to this; it’s nothing new. What image do I want to project in my choice of car? No, no, I don’t want that one, that one isn’t me at all.
But you can still put value into an old car. I love seeing those old guys with the cars they bought brand new in the 70s, and they’re just as shiny (the cars, not the old men – well, maybe their heads) as they were then. And you know that those guys value their cars. And it’s sad to see the cars that are falling apart after 10 years. No one has valued them…
I don’t know, maybe I’m just spilling crap out into the ether (and I’ll stop spinning in just a few paragraphs). I don’t really know where this leaves me. Maybe with questions than with answers. Questions like:
What do I value?
What does my image project? Do they correspond?
Do I want to change that?
How much ‘quality’ is evident in my life?
Should I weed the garden tomorrow?
I guess, I’ll take this away as a working definition of Image: A person’s image is the visible expression of what a person values.
If that’s the case, then I reckon image is very important.
It sort of puts a differnet spin on being made in the image of God (see Genesis chapters 1 to 2 for a few more details).
I guess that’s it then. I’m not sure if this is the sort of thing I want to put into my blog. It’s quite probably a bit too long. So, I’d appreciate any comments. And if you’ve got anything to add to it all as well, I’d love to hear your ideas. It’s all a work in progress. I might talk about beauty next...?
Well, until next time then...
