What does this mean to you?

I hate that question. Especially about a picture. Even more so when its a picture aimed at a certain focus group (to speak) and I'm convinced that responses are often (if not always) heavily influenced by what group the particular responder is in. Take the image to the left. Its a picture of the chapel inside the spanish fort at St Augustine, Fl (Castillo De San Marcos).

The real question posed should be "How do you interpret this picture as a reflection of your own views?" That for me, is much more properly phrased. Simply asking "What does this mean to you?" fires up my analytical mind to which I reply "Someone was standing inside the chapel and took a nice picture."

It sort of reminds me when my mom took some class on something or other, and the lecturer began by saying "I want you to think about where you are [as a being]." And so everyone did. And then they said "Now, I want you to close your eyes and think about being in the room, and then drawing back above the building and seeing the building from above. And then draw back higher and higher and see the city below, and then the state, and country, and eventually the whole earth. Now imagine you keep traveling and you see the planet fade away, and the sun is lost among the stars and eventually keep going so that all you see is the galaxy...Now I want you to think where you are." This final statement elicited a host of replys. A physics teacher I had in undergrad was attending this class, and piped up in the back (and I would have said the exact same thing) "I'm still right here, sitting in class."