Good article! Reminds me of what Krishnamurti wrote, "The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again."
The way people experience the world is colored and filtered by meaning that they assign to each experience, and those meanings ultimately are tied to their identity that has been shaped by other experiences. At the end of the day each person has their own dictionaries, encyclopedia, lexicon, appendices, glossaries, and indexes for meanings that filter their experiences and also reinforces and builds their library of meanings.
So yes, we often project and only see the world and those in it through personalized lenses.
Rare is it for anyone to be able to remove the lenses and try to fully experience things and people in their environment as they are, and not as they have been labeled.
I think this is one of the purposes in zen meditation, and when you hear meditations about becoming "one" with things around you. Your lenses and labels for them disappear and start to experience them as they are, which at the end are expressions of the Divine. This is the ultimate expression of love, to see the Divine in all things and the people around us.
Love is the dissolution of the perceived separation between self and other, acting as a shared recognition of being.
As you have said, it is often not worth it to try to correct the record and try to convince others to see us as we truly are.
All we can do is act in this way ourselves, and cannot get others to do so.
Mandy, this is outstanding. This theme keeps popping up. I wrote a piece yesterday morning about how we are all villains in someone's world, through no fault of our own. It was inspired by a quote I read from another writer. We cannot control how people see us; we can only be the best version of ourselves. Stay kind and keep writing.
Thank you, Todd! Looking forward to reading that piece. It’s truly amazing how different everyone’s life experiences are…which just strengthens the case for compassion with discernment, and patience with boundaries.
Good article! Reminds me of what Krishnamurti wrote, "The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again."
The way people experience the world is colored and filtered by meaning that they assign to each experience, and those meanings ultimately are tied to their identity that has been shaped by other experiences. At the end of the day each person has their own dictionaries, encyclopedia, lexicon, appendices, glossaries, and indexes for meanings that filter their experiences and also reinforces and builds their library of meanings.
So yes, we often project and only see the world and those in it through personalized lenses.
Rare is it for anyone to be able to remove the lenses and try to fully experience things and people in their environment as they are, and not as they have been labeled.
I think this is one of the purposes in zen meditation, and when you hear meditations about becoming "one" with things around you. Your lenses and labels for them disappear and start to experience them as they are, which at the end are expressions of the Divine. This is the ultimate expression of love, to see the Divine in all things and the people around us.
Love is the dissolution of the perceived separation between self and other, acting as a shared recognition of being.
As you have said, it is often not worth it to try to correct the record and try to convince others to see us as we truly are.
All we can do is act in this way ourselves, and cannot get others to do so.
Amen. People who want to step into that shared recognition and genuinely know (and accept) the perspective of another are a rare gift. 🙏
Mandy, this is outstanding. This theme keeps popping up. I wrote a piece yesterday morning about how we are all villains in someone's world, through no fault of our own. It was inspired by a quote I read from another writer. We cannot control how people see us; we can only be the best version of ourselves. Stay kind and keep writing.
Thank you, Todd! Looking forward to reading that piece. It’s truly amazing how different everyone’s life experiences are…which just strengthens the case for compassion with discernment, and patience with boundaries.