Todays’ Thought of the Day – What you see ain’t what you get!

Morning!

Today’s thought of the day centers upon how our mind can play tricks on us that are, quite frankly, utterly baffling.  I awakened to this idea when I opened my inbox this morning and viewed the latest Daily Dose from Nicky510.

Take the following picture below.

See those lush, vibrant squares of brilliant color?  This is a screen shot of a computer image.

But what happens now if you zoom that image up bigger than a 747?  Keep your eyes on the middle line, and then check out:

Notice anything different?  🙂

The second image really is the same thing as the first….just enlarged enough so you can see the individual pixels that actually make up the color.  Thus!  That bright shiny yellow really has green and red in it…and the adorable light blue has bands of dark blue running thru it as well.

So what you’re visually perceiving….ain’t actually what’s truly THERE.  It’s all a matter of how your brain chooses to interpret the data your eyes receive.

Which brings me to the following point!

Human beans, being what they are, are utter masters at selecting the distorted reality they CHOOSE  to embrace. 

Think about it! 

Have you ever seen a good friend battling a heartbreaking relationship of abuse….but always excusing the violence by choosing to view it as ‘their fault’?

Or maybe you told your kids to clean their room, they shoved everything into corners and then draped their bedspread over it, and then declared to you, "Mom!  Dad!  Look!  It’s clean!  You can’t see the mess!"

Well?

The art of both surviving and thriving in today’s society really depends upon how you choose to view your OWN personal reality.   You cannot change others nor control how people act….but you CAN choose how you react.

This is something I’m really trying to internalize for my kids.  They’re now of the age where their warthog-related peers are starting the utterly despicable Queen Bees cliquey-thingees (ie, who’s popular, who should be teased and abused and bullied, etc.etc.etc.etc.).  Here’s what I’ve done to equip them with the tools for dealing with this:

• I have ensured their self-confidence springs from within.  When you know you’re a darned super person, nothing ANYONE says can sneak thru your defenses!  This renders verbal bullying useless.
• I have taught them empathy.  Sometimes people are jerks because their home life causes them pain with which they cannot deal.  Always try to understand what motivates other people to act (unless of course that ‘action’ involves beating on my kids; in that case, they stop the fight in its tracks).
• I have shown them that fear and crying is okay.  This is actually pretty key in my opinion.  There’s lots of negativity associated with revealing weakness…I’ve shown my kids that when they’re with Mom or others they can trust, it’s okay to cry (and indeed, a good thing to boot, as it’s a cathartic experience).  Being afraid is part and parcel of being human; it’s how you choose to deal with the fear that make you grow as a dynamic individual.

It’s something about which to think, eh?  How YOU choose to view reality…might be starkly different than your friends and family.  The key, of course, is to always be open to ideas radically different than your own.  I’ll close with how my Daily Dose from Nicky510 closed:

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight. . . The truly wise person is colorblind.

Albert Schweitzer

…I like it as well because it’s not obvious, you have to think it over to glean his meaning (or at least I do). What he’s saying is that wisdom isn’t one dimensional. The wise man doesn’t always assume it’s go go go no matter the situation and he also doesn’t assume defeat in all circumstances. Rather, he can’t tell if the light is red or green and hence has to figure out what’s needed on the basis of the facts and his experience and insight. The wise don’t trot  out a knee jerk response whenever there’s a problem – he leaves that to  the foolish and those blinded by petrified ideologies.

When you think an answer is obvious, an immediate no-brainer, take a moment to consider the alternatives anyway. At worst, you increase your confidence in your initial inclination and, at best, see that there just might be a better way to go.  MORE 

A great thing on which to ponder, eh?  🙂

Enjoy,

Barbara Ling