Boggles my Mind

We are all at the centre of our own Universes. What we see and understand is determined by what we have seen and understood. A Controlled Hallucination which plugs in new information to all the things we have processed before. In Mindwise by Nicholas Epley, he talks about reasons why it can boggle our minds when people don't understand things the same way we do.

The Neck Problem is that people are simply paying attention to different things to us. Our attention is limited, and other people don't dwell on the same things we do. The most important thing to us, isn't necessarily the most important thing to them. There are too many important issues in the world for us to focus on. We choose. We choose differently.

The Lense Problem is that we don't see things in the same way. The Curse of Knowledge is that the deeper you understand something, the more it restricts you from seeing something else. Once you can read, you can't help but 'hear' words in your head if you see them. They then frame everything else. If you can't read a certain alphabet or language, you just see squiggles... and you will see differently. The same with languages. The same with all the context, and shared context, required to understand. Nothing exists in isolation.

My mind and heart are regularly boggled. I think all of us have to struggle with miscommunication, misunderstanding and generally missing each other. That is why I increasingly believe that debate is overrated. When someone disagrees, we should be fascinated. We should explore that alternative way of thinking. In exploring with them, both of our ways of seeing will be changed.

That is what connection does. It changes us by changing how we experience the world. Together.