I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the above term. The idea of the ‘observable distance’ dates back long before me and likely is being used in a plethora of ways. Lately it strikes me as a way to identify the space between the emotions and understandings of people. In my own life the observable distance appears quite vast between the various parties that represent my daily experience of living. How they see and perceive how I feel about them; about myself; about the relationship between the two is often quite a different thing than how I see that same dynamic.
I also am beginning to stretch that term into a form of self-understanding. In this regard the observable distance between who I see myself as and who I physically, socially, mentally, and virtually represent as grows by the day. I am, for one, older in reality than I hold in my own squishy brain. I am less talented in many regards than I hold in my own brain. This is best exemplified by a recent scenario where I, someone who did the boy-band thing twenty some-odd years ago, wound up in a Tokyo karaoke suite with a handful of my children and my partner trying to sing Anime songs and sounded like shit. Observable distance.
In relationships this can also be noted as the space/place where you think you are as a couple as opposed to where your partner sees things. This hard dose of reality can often destabilize the mutually agreed upon hallucination of ‘where things are at’. I’m going to end this post with a quote from one of my favorite films. No context… just distance. Please observe:
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller