Individual Perception
How do you see the world? Through which lens do you choose, whether through conscious thought or otherwise, to view the events that transpire around you? That’s the theme I’ve been running with for a while now; not enough to become a fixation, but enough to ponder for sure.
Recently I’ve made the proverbial jump back to therapy. My writing instincts influence me to keep my cards close to my chest, but, counterproductively, I’m a somewhat open book. Ultimately, I would like to understand myself a bit better.
I guess I’ve come to realise in my near 29 years on God’s green earth just how much weight that notion of individual perception carries. Our day to day existence sees us live a fairly singular and self-sufficient life, regardless of social activity and cultural pass times. It’s easy to get swept up in all of it, it’s even encouraged.
It’s through individual experience that we make sense of the reality we find ourselves in. All of this may seem obvious to most, I’m not exactly blowing conceptions here, but it’s uncanny how often we forget to apply this mode of thinking to others, myself included.
I used to question family members for not sharing my point of view or judge friends for acting civil to people I weren’t fond of. “They’ve been nothing but kind to me” they would say. At the time it skipped a beat, but now it seems to have struck more of a chord. I’m not saying go out and befriend a known thug because he held the door open for you once at your favourite takeaway, but it’s useful to judge someone by your own standards, not those set by your peers.
It’s natural to look to others for inspiration or cues, we’ve done this throughout childhood. But I think somewhere along the line we forget to step away from that. In some respect, we lose faith in our own intuition, our own perception. We’re taught this, that and the other from a variety of sources and, arguably, all that information really does is help push on a particular path, a generic and sometimes unfamiliar course, perhaps in the hope of making us one and the same.
I can’t think of anything worse. All of us are unique, and that should be celebrated. No one person sees the world through the same eyes as another, that’s nothing short of miraculous, if not magical. Billions of individual perceptions of life, truly think about that for a moment.
It can be a scary thought, if only because of its sheer magnitude. No doubt that’s why we warm to trends and familiarity. We seek acceptance through common ground, it’s comforting, even natural.
But I’m a big believer in forging your own identity (see ‘The Unique Pursuit of Identity’ for more musings). Ultimately, I think it’s healthy to be curious and open-minded. Some might disagree, and I would tell you otherwise. Only you can decide who to side with.
Some might argue there’s no such thing as an original idea, and perhaps there isn’t. Somewhere along the line, influence struck from an outside source. But that by no means discredits it. For better or worse, it’s born from individual perception, and an assumed faith in ones own intuition.