Our Lens of Perception: Shaping our Reality

Have you ever felt completely stupid?

The other day I was helping my daughter with her 7th grade English text, and I kept getting the answers wrong. This wouldn't be so bad if I was just her mother, but I am also her teacher! 

So how does that look?

I was using a text from a curriculum that I wasn't familiar with, but hey, this is 7th grade. I shouldn't have a problem with that, right?

This is the funny thing. This incident really made me understand what it means to look through a lens that is uniquely colored by my experience. I only could see what I expected to see instead of what was there. 

Let me share what happened:

The text was about an immigrant girl who was at a school run by nuns. She came from a poor family who didn't have a whole lot of food at home. The main point was she viewed the kids who got to stay at school for the whole day as ‘the special kids.’ They got to eat in the canteen (cafeteria). She had to go home because she didn’t live far enough away from the school, and her mom was at home.

My lens was colored by my experience of living in the USA. Children get to stay at school, and there are lunch programs for those who have no money for food and come from poor families.

I just couldn’t get this text!

The little girl thought those kids who got to stay at school were special, and she wanted to be a part of them. But looking through my lens, I thought that she obviously was a part of them. I just couldn’t get it that she actually had to go home. I just didn't see that she wanted to be viewed as special by being one of the kids that stayed at school for lunch.

It was written in black and white in front of me, but I just couldn’t see it. I was so sure she would want to go home. Through my lens kids who get to go home are special and probably come from well-off families. To me it was clear that this little girl had to stay at school because she was poor, and it was this that made her different from all those who went home. 

I could not see what was written in a simple seventh grade English text!

Has that ever happened to you?

Have you ever become aware of the tiny aperture you are looking through and realized you might have it all wrong? This small incident made a huge impression on me. It made me question how I might be getting other things wrong. Who knows if I ever see what is really in front of me? 

This kind of stumps me as the consequences are potentially huge. If I don’t know that what I am looking at is not reality, then what is reality? 

Also, it is not just the question of my reality, but what else am I not seeing? If I can only see things through the lens of my past, won’t I keep repeating my past? Take for example the topic of fear. If certain situations or feelings spark my fear, then every time that fear is sparked inside -- you know that feeling where your stomach starts to twist -- then I might always be seeing a reality based on that fear instead of what is really in front of me.

What if the things that I fear aren’t really happening, but something just set off the emotion cascade? What if that results in me living in fear as if the things were really happening even if they are not? I could be interpreting people's actions in terms of my fear, when in fact, their actions have nothing to do with me at all. What a lot of fear about nothing!

Looking through a lens and not realizing it creates boxes of limitations. You cannot see what is in front of you because its colored by your experience. Michael Singer says that no two people see the same thing, as no two people have had exactly the same experiences. That is an eye-opener. If none of us see exactly the same thing, then how can we judge someone? We have no idea what they are seeing.

What do we do? 

Socrates had an idea, “ The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.” Perhaps it is wiser to be constantly aware that we are seeing through a lens that only we have. When things go wrong or people do things that we don’t like, the wiser ones tell us to step back before reacting? They say we would then have time to consider that we are not seeing everything. There are many other angles to look at one point. If we saw the other angles, we might change our perception. Since that experience with the English text, I am even more careful before I judge someone or draw a conclusion about something someone did or said. I probably have it all wrong anyway.

Here's looking at you,