Yin vs. Yang

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were having lunch at California Pizza Kitchen in the Fairfield Mall. I'd never been there, but she'd been to one in New Jersey. For wall decorations, they have pizza boxes painted up. As we sat down she said, "Oh, they've got the same paintings as the one in Jersey." To which I replied, "You mean the pizza boxes?"

"Ohhhh, those are pizza boxes, aren't they? I never noticed that before!"

To be honest, I didn't see them as paintings, which they obviously were. This perfectly illustrates one of the primary differences between my wife and me. She sees the art, I see the box. She sees the form, I see the function. She is immediately impacted by the colorful paint swirls, I am momentarily confused by the odd shape of the canvas. We look at the same coin, but see the opposite sides. She sees the head, and I the tail.

You'd think this would lead to a cooperation in the same vein of Jack Spratt... getting a "yin-yang" kinda groove going. Instead, we tend to see the world as a negative image of what the other perceives, thus often failing to reach a common ground.