Perception is Everything

"Perception is everything" it is a phrase I have been saying and hearing often. When discussing politics, religion, interpersonal relationships, disagreements, all of it can be wrapped up in the reply, "perception is everything". In other words, five people can be witness to an accident and you will have five different explanations of what happened. "Just the facts mam" falls to the wayside when an individual shares what they view as their facts or their impression of any seemingly benign to emotionally charged situation.

We tend to assume that our perception is fact. Makes good common sense, right? It's our worldview, we experience a situation, a person or thing and we have feelings and thoughts about it. We are only relaying what we are experiencing and interpreting it as fact for us, but more importantly and incorrectly we assume it for others as well. When we come across a person with thoughts or feelings counter to our perception on the same stimuli we can make broad stroke assumptions that the person is wrong, misinformed or just plain ignorant. We rarely are as objective as we believe we are.

Life experience is a hard thing to flesh out and few people have the  ability to understand another persons polar opposite opinion/perception. Politics and religion are excellent examples of this phenomenon. We believe that the opposing parties or religions are just misinformed. Perhaps we take an aggressive or patronizing stance, shaking our heads at those who just are not in line with our "facts" our "perception".

How is it that we miss the fact that perception is at play versus a case of "who is smarter?" "who just doesn't get it?" "who is just in denial?" The process of being open to other people's perception has a huge learning curve. We tend to change our opinion about people and their perceptions when we learn their history and realize that their polar opposite opinions are the result of the people, places and things that they have been exposed to and nothing more. Often we ignore this and assume it is our responsibility to inform, school or confront others with our more educated and insightful world view. The question "would you rather be right or happy?" comes to mind in these situations as most folks who militantly force their opinions on to others usually are perceived as pretty miserable people. It is not uncommon for those with the most polar opposite opinions to be the most cantankerous of people, vigilant to attack those who are not on "their side". Doesn't sound too happy to me and at a far distance seems kind of silly as you are only forming another strongly charged experience when trying to stuff your opinion down someones throat.

History has shown us that sometimes a small population of organized people who will not tolerate or accept polar opposite opinions  have played out well for the general good of all, take civil rights leaders or sufferegettes. Some times the risk of going up against the grain of general "perception" is good, but like noted it often involves a learning curve.

This reminder that "perception is everything" can dismantle so many unnecessary interpersonal conflicts. If when we are feeling ready to attack a person or judge a person with opinions that disgust or frustrate us and instead we remember that that person can possibly be "right" based solely on who and what they have been exposed to we might tone down our superiority and instead enter a state of acceptance.