March 22, 2014

Reality v/s Perception

fluffy the griffon dog


My dear doggie, Fluffy, attacked my friend's mom while she was at my place. She just passed by his kennel nothing more. It's not serious apparently. I came to know about it after a few days. Told my mom about it and she was astonished. He never does that, he is such a darling. Why would he attack only her? are a few of the things that she blurted..

Truth is... he does that... often. He only likes family and no one else. In my mother's head he is the materialisation of good behaviour itself, playful but so composed. I didn't wish to shatter her vision of the Fluffy d'amour so I uttered not a word more.

Made me ponder though... about how blurred our vision gets by our emotions. We only see what we want to see. A few examples of that would be: girl falls for bad boy hoping that he will change his ways, guy falls for gold digger, parents refusing to see that their kids are actually bullies.. They are all examples of how love can sometimes be blind like the saying goes. What about the others: aversion, anger, sadness? I think it's basically the same. Our emotions taint reality and distort it to make it become our perception of it.

How not to get drowed in this ocean of emotions we constantly swim in?

State the facts... that's all. Well it's more simply said than done eh... I admit.
One illustration of how stating the facts work would be the case of the soup gone bad.
Wife asks husband to keep soup in fridge after using. Husband forgets and leaves soup out all night. Come morning, wife finds soup gone bad.
Case 1:
Wife states to husband that soup has gone bad. Husband realises and apologises. And they get on with their day.
Case 2:
Wife blames husband for being careless and wasting food. husband gets defensive. It escalates quickly and they have a row.

We would all choose Case 1 but it we more often fall in case to when it comes to situations... It takes training not to dive in the sea of emotions... it makes us feel so alive. But is it woth it?

1 comment:

  1. I recently heard a psychology theory about human interactions: it says that people need a reason to argue about something. That is one way they can affirm themselves as an individual. An example given is: sports. Fans of different sports team fighting over something something trivial which they actually have no control at all over.

    Back to the topic here, I believe everything we believe as 'facts' are just our perception of things, or merely scientifically-accepted perceptions of things. If we go by this thought, one might argue that 'reality' is just a perception.

    My reality would be different from yours.

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