01 / THE LENS

What do we see when we look?

We speak about seeing as though the eye delivers the whole truth. Yet our understanding of the world is rarely shaped by sight alone. Memory, expectation, desire, fear, and experience stand between what happens and what we believe has happened. Two people can witness the same event and leave with very different accounts. Neither may recognize how much of the story was supplied by their own mind.

That tension is what drew me to “Beyond the Lenses” by Albanian poet Kujtim R. Hajdari. The poem begins with a world softened by silver-colored glass. Beauty offers comfort, but the speaker’s vision is selective. Whatever cannot be named or easily understood can be pushed aside. The question that interested me was not whether beauty is false. It was whether our attachment to a beautiful explanation sometimes keeps us from examining what lies beyond it.

02 / PERCEPTION

The psychology of a preferred reality

In psychology, perception is not simply a photograph taken by the senses. It involves interpretation. We filter unfamiliar experiences through beliefs we already hold, paying attention to some details while overlooking others. This does not mean that every belief is a deception. It means our confidence can be greater than our certainty.

Hajdari’s imagery invites us to consider how readily we protect a comfortable picture of life. We may interpret kindness as permanent loyalty, approval as understanding, or familiarity as truth. Sometimes we do not realize that we are looking through a lens until an experience refuses to fit it.

The poem’s sudden fire marks that interruption. The scene moves from gentle illumination to disturbing clarity. What once seemed stable becomes uncertain. The fire is not presented here as a literal event I can identify from the poet’s life. I read it as a powerful literary image for the moment when experience challenges a cherished assumption.

03 / THE INTERRUPTION

Truth can unsettle before it teaches

There is a meaningful context to consider alongside the poem. Published biographical accounts describe Hajdari’s early writing as disrupted by political circumstances and a prolonged interruption before he resumed publishing. In an interview with Eris White, he also speaks about migration, memory, and the emotional demands of living abroad. These experiences do not prove that “Beyond the Lenses” is autobiographical. They do, however, remind me that a change in perspective can be shaped by history as well as personal reflection.

My interest in philosophy brings me back to a difficult distinction: believing something sincerely does not establish that it is true. A person may defend a conclusion because it is familiar, socially accepted, or emotionally necessary. But what happens when the evidence changes?

We often celebrate the language of awakening, as if recognizing a mistake immediately makes us wiser. Hajdari offers a more complicated possibility. Losing an illusion can also mean losing confidence, certainty, and a former sense of identity. The poem does not rush toward an easy resolution. Its final images allow grief and perception to remain together.

That restraint matters. Personal growth is not always a clean exchange of darkness for light. Sometimes a person sees more clearly and still needs time to understand what that clarity demands.

04 / THE RECKONING

The lens is not the whole world

For me, the poem’s lasting value is its invitation to intellectual humility. We should be willing to question not only the views we reject, but also the views that flatter us. What evidence have I dismissed because it was inconvenient? What have I mistaken for certainty because it made me comfortable? What experiences would change my mind?

These questions do not require us to abandon beauty, imagination, or hope. They ask us to give those qualities an honest place beside reality. A lens can help us focus. It becomes a problem when we forget that the lens itself influences what we see.

Hajdari’s poem leaves me with a thought worth carrying beyond its final stanza: perhaps wisdom begins not when we claim to see everything, but when we recognize how much remains outside our view.