What do you see in the picture above?
For me it has to be Rainbow Sprinkles. I love them — always topping my fro-yo with these. However, when I was in SE Asia last year, I found them named “Colour Rice.” This took me a second to appreciate to be sure. Yet, then, I noticed the little pellets do indeed look like rice that is in fact colourful. How clever I thought to myself as I snapped this photo.
Now, I have been enjoying rainbow sprinkles forever, but seeing them called this name made me appreciate expanding my viewpoint to see something familiar in a new way. Trying on a new, novel lens as I think about something very familiar is very refreshing and challenges me to get out of my normal way of thinking about something and see it and/or call it by a different name.
In SE Asia, I eat my ice cream with Colour Rice topping it. Tastes the same, but feels different. I now see these little rainbow sprinkles and think about a world away that refers to them in a completely different way. It can be this simple to expand one’s mind as long as we are open.
Let us all be open this week. Perhaps look at something familiar and expand your viewpoint by coming up with a new name yourself or looking it up to see how others in different areas of the world may refer to it.