Perception is EVERYTHING.

I was contemplating the idea of perception and how it varies from person to person, and I realised how little we really value the notion that everyone’s perception is completely (or slightly) different. There is no such thing as true “reality”, because we don’t see things as they really are, we see them as we are, or who we are, or where we are. Such as this simple image that I’m sure a lot of you have seen before.

One person sees 4 blocks, while the other person only sees 3; because it all depends on where they are standing and how they can see the blocks. Sometimes (probably most times to be honest), people are so caught up in what they see, that they argue until they are blue in the face that there are only 3 blocks there; yet if they took the time to walk a few steps to see it from the other persons perspective, they too would then see that there are 4 blocks when you look at it from a different angle.

This is something we need to remember throughout life, because everyone perceives situations, feelings, even other people, differently to each other. Unfortunately there are some occasions where we simply can’t ‘walk a few steps’ and see the way someone else sees something; but I guess the best thing you can do is to be aware of the fact that perception is not the truth. You can try to understand where the other person may be coming from, but it is very hard for a person to change their perspective just to see it someone else’s, and that’s largely dependent on who we are, how we were raised, what we’ve been through, etc etc, the list could go on and on. And perception is what creates ones reality, but that doesn’t mean that their reality is the truth. No one’s reality is the truth. Just let that sink in for a little bit.

I used to get so upset when people said things about me that weren’t true at all, and all I wanted was for those people to see that those thoughts they had about me were not who I was. But now I’m realising that those thoughts were only their perceptions of me from the way they saw about me, but it wasn’t the me that I saw in me.

This is the same for memories, everyone remembers the exact same scenario a little bit differently. When I first thought of this idea, I imagined it as 2 people watching the same stage show, but sitting on opposite sides of the theatre; so naturally, their viewpoint to begin with is going to be slightly different, which then creates their memories of the same stage show to be different from one another. Multiply that by however many people are in the audience, and you’re going to have possibly hundreds of unique views and memories of what was the exact same production. Pretty fascinating stuff if you ask me, and you could really go into a deep rabbit hole of thinking about how everyone sees life a little differently, and of course

But with all of that being said…I’ll leave you to ponder over all of this, with what I think is such a simple, yet strikingly powerful quote:

“There is no truth. There is only perception” – Gustave Flaubert