Reality is unbelievable

The imagined is vague and undefined. The real is harsh and immediate. The imagined enlarges us and makes us stronger. The real shows us how weak and small we are. We cannot overestimate our ability to deny reality. We do it constantly. We rewrite a fight to make ourselves into the victim. We believe the weak argument we made to defend our lie, simply because we made it. Over time we lose the ability to distinguish the difference between what we want to believe and what is real. We become accustomed to the benefits of the imagined, and lose the desire to question it.

Paying attention is directed perception

Listening is different from hearing. It is the same difference as looking rather than seeing. It is active perception. And this active nature makes a difference in how we remember.

Let’s say that you are driving in an unfamiliar town and you stop and ask someone for directions. You listen closely to what they say: “take a left at the first left, then travel down 3 lights, then take a right, and make a quick left onto Elm.” All the time you are listening, you are trying to remember exactly what the person says. So you replay it again and again in your memory. You might even repeat the directions to make sure you got them right. In this case we are highly interested in what the person is saying, and we try to concentrate as best as we can.

Compare this to regular conversation. How often do we listen this intently to what someone is telling us? How often do we replay their words in our memory so that we can try to hold onto them?

In everyday life, we do not try to listen or try to look or try to taste the food we are eating. We simply perceive whatever we perceive. At times, certain ideas or images catch our attention and we concentrate on them naturally. This is the best way to perceive actively. However, the real test of our perceptual abilities is when we create interest by practicing active perception.

Perception is mercifully slow

We tend to ignore the simple fact that a plant is growing while we look at it. In the evening, when we look at the plant again, we are not surprised that it perked up to the sun over the course of the day. However, we would be floored if we saw it perking up, if we saw it moving.

Perhaps it is a blessing that our perceptual abilities cannot record movements that slow. We would have an entirely different experience if they did. We would see buildings decay, sidewalks rot, people wrinkling up. We would see movies as a set of flashing still pictures, our kids would be growing in front of us. The sun would be moving slowly across the sky, inching toward sunset. Dust would be collecting very slowing in the corner of the room. And the pages of a book would be yellowing in your hands.