Every single person on this earth has their unique lens that they see the world through. It’s like we have our very own glasses that create our reality. And that reality can’t really be fully understood by anyone else. Just like we can’t understand anybody else’s.
Sure, we may think that we are empathetic and able to put ourselves in others’ shoes. But to be honest, we can never really understand – because our glasses are always there in the way.
What creates our lens, our glasses? Well, our upbringing, our culture, our beliefs, our parents and so on. Not even siblings (who may have had a lot in common) see the world the same way as each other. Even they have different glasses.
We are exposed to several million pieces of sensory data per second but only register about 7 of them! How can I know if I’ve registered the “right” 7 – well, I can’t of course. And consider how unlikely it is that someone else has registered the same 7 pieces of data.
Imagine how different everything must look to people based on what sensory input they’ve registered. It’s an absolute miracle that we can communicate with each other at all.
If we are truly going to be able to communicate and lead a relatively harmonious life on this earth – across cultural, national, religious and idealogical boundaries – then we need to realise that there are very few things are “right or wrong”.
If I can keep a flexible mindset, be open to the possibility of being wrong, not having all the answers, that everything changes at such a speed that we can’t take anything for granted…..
Then I think we can be humble enough to say – “you know what, I don’t fully understand your situation, but I accept you just the same, it’s OK, it’s OK to be different”.