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Indoors - Outdoors
Some years ago there was a popular cartoonist by the name of Walt Kelly. Readers may recall his character
Pogo, a small, furry, 'possum-like figure from the Okefenokee Swamp, who shared with his friends
Albert the alligator and a turtle named Churchy la Femme a variety of adventures that mirrored the human condition in
America during some difficult times in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
Like many humorists and satirists, Walt Kelly was a serious and thoughtful person. Before he became well known, I recall hearing him give a talk on the freshness of perception of the very young. He felt that little children had not yet learned to project already predetermined meanings onto their
 experiences, as we adults tend to
do. By way of illustration, he described how one day his young son had come up to him and asked, “Daddy, why is it that people always build their houses outdoors?”
It is a lovely question, and it has many implications.
Inside is our world; outside is what we have learned to call
nature. So ingrained is this dividing line created by the doorway
that we refer to someone who likes to climb mountains and hunt,
to canoe and fish, as an “outdoorsman”. We even have
magazines called Outdoors and Outdoor Life. Thus,
for us, that doorway has become an important frame of reference,
but for the most part an unconscious one.
I tell this story of Walt Kelly’s son and his delightful
question because in that strange dualism of “outdoors” and
“indoors” we have the opportunity to see clearly two
elements, each of which provides the environment from which the
other may be seen. In fact, oddly enough, neither one can exist
without the other. If you attempt to remove one part, the other
part disappears as well.
A similar relationship exists between other pairs of concepts
like “front” and “back” or “up” and “down”. And
is it possible that the idea of something being “infinite”
really has no meaning except as it starts at a particular point
in space and time called the “finite”? Could a similar
relation be said to exist between “consciousness” and
“unconsciousness”, or between “maleness” and
“femaleness”?
My point might be better expressed as a corollary applicable to
all perception: it is impossible to perceive any environment
except from the context of another one. We can find any number of
proverbs that illustrate this. “You never miss the water ‘til
the well runs dry,” or “only the blind know what it really
means to see.”
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