Perception = Reality
Living with someone who you’ve never lived with before is a very interesting thing at times. There have been plenty of vacations and stay-cations, short and long, prior to this, but living together…that’s another ball park. You’re in each others space practically 24/7, and start to depend on each other for things you never once did before. What’s that like when your parents had no other choice but to deal with you? (Now this person chooses it. Weird.) We all come from varying places and backgrounds, and environments, then come together like a sandwich. All of those things make up who we are as people, our perceptions, and our little “habits” we may not recognize. But, others do.
Certain things that my boyfriend does makes me think, “Where the heck did you learn that?” For instance, his very specific way of folding his socks. (I was incredibly offended the first time I helped him fold his laundry when he undid every single pair of socks I had already folded.) He has his favored way of folding them, which was a learned thing and then engraved into him. Same with me; I’m sure there’s a list of things he could tell you that I do which appear odd to him. (Actually, no, don’t get him started.) It’s all about a person's stance based off of their experiences, and learned behaviors.
Now, this doesn’t of course just pertain to folding but everyday situations. A disagreement with a co-worker, a misunderstanding between strangers, or even a simple varying opinion. All of these “differences” are formed individually, based on our environments and create our reality, how we view the world. Every path of life houses version of events that may be traumatic, peaceful, loving, evil, happy, hurtful, healing, and accepting. While we could have endured the very same event at the same time together, my experience with it could have been traumatic, while yours could have been healing. This then shapes our mentality moving forward on situations, and events similar to the one experienced.
The idea that perception is reality to each of us is quite a “far-out-there” concept to get. But the more thought you put into it, the more sense it makes. This may be a good time to explain the difference between perception and perspective. Perception relates to how we interpret things, and give definition to them through the senses, based on experiences we’ve endured. Perspective is our point of view, how we first see things. They each go into the other, as in our perspectives are based off of our perception. Yours are different than mine, as mine are different than yours. Which is a really important thing to remember throughout our days, especially during those instances of disagreements, misunderstandings and varying opinions.
What I’ve really started to finally understand is that my glass my appear to be blue, but to someone standing on the other side of the table it may be purple. We could argue to death that the other is color blind, stupid because they don’t know their colors, or just down right stubborn in not attempting to agree to disagree. What we each don’t know is that we are both right in our own ways because on my side, it is blue yet on the other, it is purple. The reasons as to why it is both are simply semantics as this is a theoretical situation for educational purposes but, you get the jist…Our perception of the glass color differs because of where we stand around the table.
This all also especially plays into situations where you may have hurt someones feelings and genuinely think you did nothing wrong. You could think that the person is being too sensitive…Sure, maybe they are. But think about it, who are you to tell them that they aren’t valid in how they feel? Just because your intentions may have differed and you didn’t mean to upset them, doesn’t mean you didn’t anyway. It isn’t easy to put a hard stop to our instincts, especially when they are driven by emotion. But we have to remember that we are in control of ourselves, and we can’t just react. Next time you find yourself getting frustrated over something with either your partner, friend, parent, co-worker, boss, child, take a step back to tap into their assumed perception and perspective.
Our perception is our reality, individually. Once that is comprehended, and there are acts of attempting to remember that in each of our lives, the better off we may be. (Perhaps one could run a study somehow.) I personally just think that if we all understood each of us live in our own reality shaped by our thoughts and beliefs that are formed from our life experiences, maybe we would be able to “agree to disagree” on a lot of things. Or at least, be a bit more open minded to a varying outlook and testing out a walk in our peers shoes.
“Perception is reality so even if you disagree with how someone feels about something, it doesn’t make it any less true or real to them.”
