Perceptions and Reality: What Do We See When We Look at the World?

How’s It Going?

I posted this cute picture (well cute to me) on social media this week, snapped on a bike trip, with a witty comment about sharing the lady’s pain over her lockdown locks.

It got a few laughs, who doesn’t like a nice animal picture?

But I also know that any presumption on my part, is completely that, it’s on my part.

I saw one interpretation, who knows what you will see, and, of course, we neither of us have any idea what the experience of being photographed was like for the lady in the picture.

Seeing What’s On Our Mind, Not What’s in Our World

There’s a deeper message here though.

My first thought was,

How sweet!

And I leapt to make a connection between the scruffy straggly wool, and my experience of months without a haircut.

But this is my experience…

I have no idea whether this lady was eyeing me with curiosity or fear (sheep are prey animals so at some point I expected her to turn away, which she did.)

And that’s the point, it was my experience, not hers, not an abstract one, not a shared one, not a systemic one. It was my experience of waiting for a haircut and I happened across an image that fitted my experience of the world, of course, it isn’t her experience.

Mind Your Assumptions

It’s an ‘of course’ moment with respect to the pretty lady, but it’s good to notice this from time to time, or at least know it foundationally, because we base all our experience with fellow humans off our own—rarely do we actually take the time to ask. And, if we do, our questions rarely come from a completely empty place from which to hear what’s really going on for someone.

It’s very subtle.

I found myself doing it when I interviewed some past clients recently for some research and I asked about how the last year had been. I was about to qualify, ‘given it’s been a strange year’, but she rushed in with an answer before I got the words out of my mouth, thankfully dissolving my assumption before I could speak it.

You Too?

I could give you a million other examples but the simple truth is that we all live in the separate reality of our own experience. Full stop.

We make meaning out of what we see; it’s almost like we are scanning the horizon of the world out there, seeking evidence for our experience of life.

We’re alert to what’s on our mind, we are not alert to the full spectrum of the reality outside of us.

The best we can do, I think, or at least, the best I can do, is check myself as I become aware of it, and re-orient my question, or my perception, without the meaning I’ve innocently laid over it.

Try to pull back, wipe the slate clean, of my assumptions.

And be kind, always, to myself and others.

A Sheep’s a Sheep…

And, some days, I’m happy to live in my fantasy world (knowing full well it’s my fantasy) that this very sweet lady was curious and interested in what I was doing in her field.

📸 🐑 💇🏻‍♀️ 😉

With love,

Cathy