Everything Is in the Eye of the Beholder

I am going to make a bold statement here:  You have NO IDEA what you look like.

This probably seems absurd, as you have been making a regular assessment in the mirror at least once and probably dozens of times a day since you were cognizant of the opportunity to do so, but mark my words:  You have NO IDEA what you look like.

To other people, that is.

And that is not a cheat; it is honestly the essence of this thing we call life.  We cannot “put ourselves in the other guy’s shoes” in any kind of meaningful way.  We know what we know and we see what we see and the number of unique factors that have contributed over the years to your unique perception is true of every single person on the planet.

You are a snowflake, whether you like it or not.

No one will ever replicate or duplicate you or your life experiences and so the rallying cry that we all have more in common than we don’t is only true-ish.  And that is why the butterfly effect is so compelling.  The number of ingredients that went into the stew that is YOU is so incredibly legion, if you change even one, you have a whole different blend.

It’s pretty profound, actually.

Now, most (likely ALL) of us have experienced trauma and this is a mitigating factor of our perception in ways both large and small. “PTSD” is real, and if you took a piece (or sleeve) of paper (or your smartphone, I guess, but not recommended) and wrote down all of the experiences you have had that “traumatized” you in some way, you would probably be at work on that for a significant period of time.  We are programmed for survival above all things, and so we cope, we adjust, we manipulate, we accommodate.

And so does everybody else.

I am not here to champion “both siderism” at all; some things are empirically wrong.

But I was recently reminded of a controversial film from the 80’s in which a dog was essentially trained to be racist, and while we hope we can hold people to higher standards than dogs, there is an element of “training” in all of our upbringings.  And the complex kaleidoscope of parental influence is so intractable that we could spend eternity trying to understand and undo the damage inadvertently done to ONE individual by ONE parent, let alone the rest of us.

And I am not here to attack parents, either; damaged people raise damaged people and so on.  It is not a “good” vs. “evil” dynamic.  It is just reality.

Which returns to my original premise: to quote my favorite musical of all time, “we both have ‘truths’—are mine the same as yours?’  My dad loved the expression “assumptions make an ass of ‘u’ and me”.  It is hard—nay, impossible!—to fully understand another’s life, but just acknowledging this can move us a step in the right direction.

You just don’t know.

That is the only “truth” you really need to contemplate.

It breaks you open in ways you cannot expect.  And, if you really let it bloom in your consciousness, it gives you clarity into your LACK of clarity of your own perception.

I had a great conversation recently with two young men about the slippery nature of time—how it seems to speed up as we age.  My childhood lasted an eternity in my perception, but my adult life has accelerated (snowballed) at an alarming pace.  One of the boys (I mean, young men but I have known them since they were boys.  Which seems like yesterday.) pointed out that uncertainty stretches time.

Example—on a road trip to an unfamiliar location, the trip to your destination seems to last so much longer than the trip back to your familiar home.  When we don’t know where we are going, it seems to take longer.  Even though logic says the same distance would take the same amount of time.

Life is like that, too.  When we are young, everything is uncertain because everything is new.  But experience helps us to reduce our uncertainty and therefore accelerates our perceptions of time passing.  So if you want to slow time down, step out of your comfort zone and into uncertainty.

This is something we hear about a lot but are loathe to do.  Comfort zones are so darn comfortable!  But they are keeping us isolated and estranged.

Your comfort zone not only prevents you from fulfilling your own potential, but it is also instrumental in the divisions we now face.  We have all been traumatized to one degree or another and we all want to prevent it from happening again.  But what this fear is actually preventing is personal growth as well as societal evolution.

So practice saying this—just once a day, or however many times you look into the mirror—“I have no idea what I am talking about”.  Because it is definitely true of SOMETHING and more likely true of a lot of things.  And the best part is, nobody else has any idea what they are talking about either, at least half the time anyway.

Neuroplasticity is a big buzzword these days for good reason…it really is our gateway to both peace and expansion, which sometimes feel like equal and opposite.  Our ability to accept that we don’t know what we are talking about half the time opens us up to both learning and also the unbelievable peace that accompanies not having to know everything. One of the greatest scenes in any movie ever is Holly Hunter in Broadcast News responding to the inquiry, “It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you’re the smartest person in the room.”

“No.  It’s awful.”

So take that load off.  Everything is in the eye of the beholder, yes.  But we each have an area of genuine expertise to share and that can be a beautiful contribution to the larger conversation IF we are able to hear the expertise of others.

So keep your eyes, your ears and your heart open.  Be the kind of person people come to not only because you “know a thing or two”, but also because you have a thing or two to learn.  Like it or not, we need each other.

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