What Do You See?

Let me answer that for you. You see what your mind decides you will see. I’ve written about the narrative fallacy that holds humans in its grip. The short story there is that there’s a reason why I’d bet all the money in my wallet that you couldn’t recite to me ninety-nine random letters of the alphabet. Yet, if I read you three sentences comprised of ninety-nine letters, you’d have no trouble.

Humans like stories. It’s how we survived, built cultures, and shared our history for much of our existence. This gets us into trouble when we build a narrative to explain events and outcomes we do not understand. It’s how we used to explain the rising of the sun as phenomenon involving a guy taking his chariot of fire for a spin.

As it turns out, this tendency runs deeper than our genetic inclination to create stories. Think about how we take in information. It comes in from our senses. When you think about it, our senses bring in selective details about the world around us. You don’t see everything, hear everything, etc. On some level, your operating system determines how much of the world you take in. Next, the brain interprets the information coming in. Finally, we have a conscious experience with the sensations that are interpreted in the mind.

This three step filter is far from an absolute experience of the world. Authors Rosamund and Benjamin Zander discuss the power of this phenomena in their text, The Art of Possibility, when they introduce the findings from a classic 1953 experiment with the vision of frogs. As it turns out, frogs see only “clear lines of contrast”, “sudden changes in illumination”, “outlines in motion”, and “curves of outlines of small, dark objects”.

So, wait a minute.

Frogs can see small, dark objects, but can’t see color or recognize faces? Of course not, because these creatures have evolved to perceive that which will keep them alive. They see food (very tiny insects) and they see dangerous movement (predators).

While this may be stretching your willingness to play ball with me, but I’d encourage you to recognize that you’re only seeing the world you can see. Not one of us see the world as it actually is. As a result, I’d encourage you to remove yourself from your perspective enough to recognize that what you perceive is only your storied version of what is real.

That’s a practice that has no limits in application. Try it!

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach