Periscopes

Contrary to its relatives, the microscope and the telescope, which are used for close examination and extreme distance viewing, respectively, the periscope is used to capture a natural field of vision - simply from a different angle.  Through the use of refractive angled mirrors, periscopes allow the user to see what would otherwise be obstructed.  Dale Earnhardt’s extended peripheral vision would be quite jealous of periscope vision.  Practical uses of the periscope may be pigeonholed to submarine vessels, but world-class spies would perish the thought.  Often, a different perspective is needed, indeed, a different vantage point - and I don’t mean that of Dennis Quaid.  To look through a periscope for the first time is not just enchanting and disorienting - it’s mesmerizing.  It is as if a whole new world has been opened to you, though the angled mirror is but a few feet away.  It’s as if you stepped through the proverbial looking glass.  I confess to having never been on a submarine, and I don’t especially want to.  I’m not necessarily claustrophobic - it’s just that the iron walls of the vessel seem much too akin to a very large, very wet, steel coffin.  I have looked through a periscope, or at least a very pedantic version of one that came as a part of a tent my sister and I had as children.  

If the microscope’s platitude is wisdom, and the telescope’s platitude is humility, then the periscope’s must be sympathy.  That is, through the microscope I’m encouraged to seek answers as to and ‘how…’ (and perhaps, ‘why’) - the big questions of life as I study the otherwise hidden world of microbes.  And through the telescope I see the grandeur of the cosmos that is around me, and is not me, and I’m humble.  But through the periscope I see something else, something nearer to me, and my analysis changes.  Too often I let the prison of limited perspective be more robustly fabricated to solitary confinement when I refuse the wisdom of others.  Though they too are mere mortals and are existentially on the same lateral plane, I can glean much from others’ perspective, though removed from mine only a few feet away.  The literal distance between us will likely be far eclipsed by the allegorical.