DAILY CHOICE: Friday, December 11, 2009

Reality vs. Perception

REFLECTION:

Reality is so real, so present, so in place that it is easily overlooked, ignored, or displaced. The human mind has a unique ability to convincingly fashion its own reality in a manner that allows a person to absolutely know what he absolutely knows not to be so. While it is true that we frequently fashion the truth to fit the surrounding environment and circumstances, it is equally true that external forces and realities help dictate reality. A threat in one setting with one individual may be a blessing to another in a different time and place. This is not to say that any one of us can change reality by simply ignoring it. But it is to say that reality is a bit soft around the edges, never quite as good or as bad as we perceive. To achieve anywhere near one’s full potential or capacity requires practical consideration of reality. But this consideration rightly understands that eyes and ears can be mistaken. Not everything that is real is readily seen or heard. Nor is earnest straightforward communications delivered face to face to be confused with honesty or infused with blind confidence. For this may or may not be the case. People do lie you know. And they will do it to your face. What each of us says never fully matches what we think, feel, or believe. If that were the case, the harsh reality would leave little room for friendship. So perceptions take the place, a softer reality that supports greater commonality than may in fact exist. After all, life’s not perfect. It’s a predicament. On any given day, each of us may require a clean slate to tell our story anew, without prejudice.MUSES:

MUSES:

That that is is.
Shakespeare, ‘Twelfth Night’

It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.
Will Rogers

In the ant’s house, the dew is a flood.
Old saying

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley

If I’ve learned anything in my seventy years it’s that nothing’s as good or as bad as it appears.
Bushrod H. Campbell

One’s task is not to turn the world upside down, but to do what is necessary at the given place and with a due consideration of reality.
Dietrich Bonhoffer

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they see nothing but sea.
Francis Bacon

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.
Charles Dickens

If we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all the friendships.
Bertrand Russell

Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
George Santayana

You cannot write in the chimney with charcoal.
Russian proverb