Looking At Life Through A Bagel, An Experiment

What if everything we see isn't actually everything?

Jun 28, 2022

This week, I continue my exploration of themes prompted by the movie Everything Everywhere All At once. If you haven’t seen it yet, click here for a spoiler-free version of this essay.

“I got bored one day, and I put everything on a bagel. Everything. All my hopes and dreams, my old report cards, every breed of dog, every last personal ad on Craigslist. Sesame. Poppy seed. Salt. And it collapsed in on itself. Because, you see, when you really put everything on a bagel, it becomes this. The truth.”
“What is the truth?”
“Nothing matters.”
“No, Joy. You don’t believe that.”
“Feels nice, doesn’t it? If nothing matters, then all the pain and guilt you feel for making nothing of your life, it goes away. Sucked into a bagel.”

I am curious about how we see things. How our experiences and our state of mind shape the lens that informs not just how we look at things but what we are even able to see. How the edited photos of our experiences become the full picture, and how- without realizing it- we interpret meaning from this curated collection and continue to assemble that into the silent story we tell ourselves about who we are, what is real, and what is possible.

Our brains have built this brilliant protective mechanism to help us stay safe by steering us toward what’s familiar, whether we want more of the same or not. Its whole job is to keep us from getting disappointed or hurt, from feeling any kind of pain or discomfort, so it filters every experience through a particular framework, shaped by what has happened in the past- usually a past so far away it feels fundamental. Like fact.

It cleverly sorts out anything that does not align with this reality so that, over and over again, what we experience confirms and reinforces these truths. And it’s not that they’re not true. They’re just not the whole truth.

The trouble is, in preventing a known disappointment, a new disappointment is created. Not getting our hopes up, deflates into hopelessness. Reinforced sadness and despair get magnified until it’s too hard to see anything else. It’s by design, but not from desire.

I understand the significance of Joy’s bagel as a symbol for chaos and destruction and depression and the nothingness of it all. But I can’t help but also see it as her lens. When you zoom in on The Bagel, it becomes an eye. Even closer, it becomes the whole universe.

As an experiment, I’ve spent the last few days looking at the world through a bagel. Not through the eyes of a bagel. Not, like, going around pretending I was a bagel to see what the world looks like from its point of view. That would be so silly.

Although…I do have a penchant for giving personality to inanimate objects and bagels, of all the breakfast foods, have really been through a lot. They’ve weathered the low carb craze, the gluten intolerance epidemic, the dairy free initiative that hit its friend, cream cheese, really hard and, of course, impacted bagels by association. And, yet, this beloved breakfast food remains. Dedicated shops built for its service, with names like Courage and Unity. At its heart, it’s really a comeback story. Ok, ok. I think we can all agree that this is a resonate and universal story worth telling, but it’ll have to be another time. That’s not what I’ve been doing.

I have literally been looking through a bagel. Like a pair of glasses.

You know, seeing that in print, I suppose my version also sounds pretty silly. But stay with me here.

I wanted to find out what I would see and what would I miss with such a small portal for viewing the world. Would small things stand out on their own that normally get lost? Would bigger things get lost standing out of context?

The great thing about this experiment is that I already knew what was going to happen. Always a productive posture to assume when beginning an experiment (I hope the heavy sarcasm is coming across here). And as it usually goes, that fixed idea taught me my first lesson. Even though there were three main takeaways, that one kind of sums up the whole point.

No. 1: THE BAGEL BECOMES THE DIRECTOR

When the lens you’re looking through is so small and so specific, you have to know what you’re looking for and, even then, you spend a lot of time lining those things up just right so they are framed the way you want in your tiny window. Sure, you can see them clearly once you do, and that can feel like discovery and flexibility, but really it’s just an accommodation of a limitation.

And, if you don’t- if you decide to remove all expectations and open yourself up to whatever you might find- the truth is, you’ll likely not find much of anything. Which will lead you to believe there is nothing there. When, really, you’re just looking at the gaps between things, all the nothingness that creates context for the somethingness, but is meaningless on its own.

The thing is, you can change your mind, but if you don’t change your lens you’ll just keep finding what you already know is there. And when you know what you’re going to see, you stop looking altogether.

No. 2: THE BAGEL BECOMES THE VIEW

I figured it would be hard to tell what you’re looking at most of the time- having to be so zoomed in would crop out important information, would turn objects into fragments. I knew whatever I saw would lack context because I wouldn’t be able to capture the whole picture. But, I have to say, having such a small viewfinder did create a certain amount of focus. What you can see, you can see clearly. It eliminates distraction. You pick up on details that would otherwise get lost. It’s satisfying in that way.

What I didn’t expect, was how, when you look through a bagel, mostly what you see is the bagel. Just practically speaking, in my “bagel photos” the bagel takes up most of the frame. Even trying to take the photos, my camera struggled to focus on anything other than the bagel.

It’s very easy for the the bagel to became the view, not the point of view.

No. 3: THE BAGEL BECOMES A BARRIER

In order to see any scenes or people through the bagel, I had to get really far away. Especially people. People in their entirety don’t fit very well in that tiny space. In general, people in their entirety don’t fit very well into boxes or any other kind of defined, limited shapes.

The irony is that increasing that distance in order to see more, puts you really far from what you wanted to see better. You lose the details. From where you have to stand, you’re no longer part of the scene. If someone tried to talk to you, you’d struggle to hear them. Unless they were shouting. But even then, you’d only hear shouting, not necessarily what they were trying to say.

The distance makes you an observer. The bagel becomes a barrier.

I have actually been doing this experiment for awhile, sans bagel. Replaying the movie of my life, pausing at the parts that feel like they defined me. Examining those moments from really close up and really far away. Digging around in the archives of unedited footage to see what didn’t make the director’s cut.

Sometimes it’s so different than the way I remembered it- a new detail, a new angle reveals an entirely different shape of the story. Sometimes it’s pretty much the same. Not everything can be fixed or changed with just a shift in perspective. Still- that simple awareness, that option, has helped to create a new kind of framework, a more generous filter for everything else.

I’m noticing more and more when I start to apply an old story to something new. I see where I might be bringing the past into the present, where that’s appropriate and where it’s not, even where it’s fair but I can admit it’s not necessarily helpful.

It can be really hard to wrap our heads around all the ways in which we steer toward a familiar discomfort. To grasp the defiant willpower of our fear to direct our actions, how it grabs the wheel and forces u-turns that take us back in the direction we just came from. Sometimes it’s obvious. Oftentimes, it’s not.

But what can we do about it if we don’t even know it’s happening. We just look out the window, heart sinking with disappointment, because maybe, we think, this is just all there is. The windshield, itself, distorting the view.

Really, every lens is an illusion of some kind, a selected observation. But I don’t think what we’re looking for is one lens to replace another. What we need is a whole belt full of lenses at the ready and the ability to switch between them.

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