On my daily commute home from the office, I pass by a pair of mirrored, L-shaped residential structures. As I exit the freeway and approach these buildings from the south, I see that these buildings look rather unimpressive. Visually, I am presented with a narrow, uninspiring blank wall with a column of square windows near the center of the wing. The buildings stand four stories tall and remain partially blocked by plain, squatty garage rows. As I continue north, the buildings disappear behind a small medical clinic and a car wash. When they reappear, I see what appears to be a massive structure with stepped-out segments hosting pairs of windows. This wall of the building is adorned with faux-stone siding and sports larger windows.
These two oppositional sights are of the same structure, viewed from different perspectives.
We view the world through a pair of remarkable lenses that filter light, separate colors, and allow us to process images of our surroundings through senses and memory. What we see doesn’t always align. We are each different people, and no two of us can stand in exactly the same spot at the same time to catch a glimpse of the buildings. When we move closer, further away, up, or down, our perceptions of the world around us change.
This is a concrete visualization of our senses. But as sentient beings, we are more than sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch.
Our view of the ground beneath our feet may feel comfortable and familiar. What you see is what you see and what you see is what it is. But look up and you see birds nesting and squirrels foraging for food in the high branches. These creatures look down and see the same ground you and I see, but from their branches it all appears much different.
So let me broaden the scope to talk about abstract senses. Our ideas are as much a part of our lives as sight and sound.
Since no two of us can stand in the same place at the same time, our opinions on the world at large can be exceedingly diverse. I recently read a piece on the internet where the author shares how some of his views changed when he moved from a small town to a big city. At scales this large, we lose a lot of detail from afar. What the author chose to focus on, however, had little to do with sight, but with ideas. Moving had challenged his prior views in such a way that he broadened his understanding of the world.
Many of us choose to occupy our own little space because it is familiar. It is safe. It is comfortable, so why would we ever want to leave?
Mark Twain once opined that “Travel is fatal to bigotry, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
We don’t only need to travel to better understand the world around us, but to read and study languages and cultures different from our own.
Reading the comments after the aforementioned article was also interesting. Several claimed that if the author’s ideology could change so drastically, he never really held firm to it in the first place. This made me ask myself why some of us value such rigidity.
In the context of knowledge and learning, I feel strongly that we should challenge our own perceptions. When we dig in to our own little universe and complain about bias or ‘fake news,’ we are intentionally limiting what we see and understand to what we already believe. This is a concept called confirmation bias, and it is hard-wired into our brains. We are apt to cling to ideas and figures that agree with the opinions we had already formed, and reject the rest. But rejecting those ideas only serves to hinder us.
One of the most problematic confirmation biases many of us harbor concerns religion. We expect that our spiritual views will always stay the same because after all, the gospel doesn’t change. Yet even when we open that window and study more of the details within, we see that different ideas within that structure can alter our perspectives.
Clinging to our own ideas and rejecting the rest has caused turmoil in this nation and in our world. When you read the news of the day through this lens of truth, the commotion and some of its causes become obvious. We solve problems in our society through listening to others, adapting, and compromising on solutions. None of this is possible when we close our minds and harbor consistently narrow views of ‘the other side.’
I am a big believer in applied learning. Now that I know the basic tenets of what I have learned, how can I apply it to my life? Here’s what I do: I read voraciously. I watch people and listen to their stories to gain an understanding of how they see things. I travel. I think third- and fourth-dimensionally on my own.
In the coming weeks and months, I hope to bring back my collection of thoughts. I love humor, but I cannot promise my future musings will always incorporate wit. I hope to explore some of the social issues we face these days, but without the politics and division. I plan to build an author website in the near future that features space for my semi-regular articles as well as interesting tidbits about my books and new projects I am working on.