It has been said that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" but lately it has become clear that nearly everything is in the eye of the beholder. What I mean is this: people see what they want to see, and in more ways than we normally think. We sometimes notice this when someone we care about is being blind to a situation that is obvious to everyone else around the. In truth though, this extends far deeper into the way we notice things in the world, and therefore who and what they interact with, and the perceptions they have of reality. Let me illustrate this point for you with a few examples I have seen recently (names witheld).
Example 1: Several high school girls are crushing on their coach. For months they have held onto this infatuation without fail. The interesting thing is that time and time again, it comes up in random ways that the coach is actually gay. Though not insanely "on fire," he's not very shy about it. He sports clothes and accessories that support gay rights. His fellow coaches have mentioned it in passing on several occasions. Despite this fact, when the girls were approached about the crush, another teacher asked, "What if he's gay?" The response? "Clearly he's not gay. That's silly." All evidence exists to the contrary, and yet each instance, the girls create a story for themselves about why such things exist, not even allowing the thought of what is actually the truth.
Example 2: Three friends are in an area with a lot of people around them. After a while, they start talking about who was there. One of the friends says that there were a ridiculous amount of wardrobe malfunctions that were painful to see. Another friend said that there were about 5-6 really cute gay guys. To this, the final friend responded, "Really? There were cute gay guys? I didn't see any." Note that later when these gentlemen were pointed out, the final friend indeed agreed with their attractiveness. The fact is that he just simply never looks for guys. Not what he is focused on in his life, and therefore simply doesn't see them. Both the latter friends agreed to the atrocious clothes when they were pointed out, but again, fashion isn't their forte, so these "egregious errors" were nearly invisible to them
If one thought about it, almost anyone could list plenty of examples like this. Parents see in their kids the image of themselves or the hope of correcting the regrets of their own past. Lovers see in their partners the traits they want or the failings of their past relationships. The car lover will notice a shiny new BMW when his friend might instead notice the driver's silly expression. It's almost so natural that we don't even notice it, and yet it has major impacts on how we relate to the world. Lots of research has been done that says that optimists succeed more than pessimists. Several theories have come forth as to why that is. Books have been written about how "visualizing your success" can actually create it, etc. But what if the answer is more simple than all of that? What if it's simply the fact that optimists, who constantly see the glass as half-full just notice more avenues to success? If we only see what we want to see, a pessimist will see the road to failure even if a path to success were to be right beside them.
At the end of the day, the big questions are is this tendency we have as people good or bad, and what, if anything should we do about it? In some ways it is probably highly beneficial to us that we automatically filter so much out. There's a lot going on in the world, and even the most observant of people really can't take it all in. Our subconscious is smart enough to take care of all this excess information for us, letting us see things that mean something to us.
This of course still leaves us with the responsibility of opening our eyes to the things we really want, instead of falling prey to what we might call bad observational habits. Lots of people waste their time on looking for things that they want to hate. Looking to things that we like or love instead would save a whole lot of unhappiness. Though we can't all be optimists, taking a little time to look for the good in situations would ease a lot of burdens on people. Stopping ourselves every once in a while and looking for something different would definitely be worthwhile, rather than searching only for the familiar. Robert Frost told us all to take "the road less traveled." I whole heartedly agree, but my first bit of advice would be to make sure that we look hard enough to find this road.
Example 1: Several high school girls are crushing on their coach. For months they have held onto this infatuation without fail. The interesting thing is that time and time again, it comes up in random ways that the coach is actually gay. Though not insanely "on fire," he's not very shy about it. He sports clothes and accessories that support gay rights. His fellow coaches have mentioned it in passing on several occasions. Despite this fact, when the girls were approached about the crush, another teacher asked, "What if he's gay?" The response? "Clearly he's not gay. That's silly." All evidence exists to the contrary, and yet each instance, the girls create a story for themselves about why such things exist, not even allowing the thought of what is actually the truth.
Example 2: Three friends are in an area with a lot of people around them. After a while, they start talking about who was there. One of the friends says that there were a ridiculous amount of wardrobe malfunctions that were painful to see. Another friend said that there were about 5-6 really cute gay guys. To this, the final friend responded, "Really? There were cute gay guys? I didn't see any." Note that later when these gentlemen were pointed out, the final friend indeed agreed with their attractiveness. The fact is that he just simply never looks for guys. Not what he is focused on in his life, and therefore simply doesn't see them. Both the latter friends agreed to the atrocious clothes when they were pointed out, but again, fashion isn't their forte, so these "egregious errors" were nearly invisible to them
If one thought about it, almost anyone could list plenty of examples like this. Parents see in their kids the image of themselves or the hope of correcting the regrets of their own past. Lovers see in their partners the traits they want or the failings of their past relationships. The car lover will notice a shiny new BMW when his friend might instead notice the driver's silly expression. It's almost so natural that we don't even notice it, and yet it has major impacts on how we relate to the world. Lots of research has been done that says that optimists succeed more than pessimists. Several theories have come forth as to why that is. Books have been written about how "visualizing your success" can actually create it, etc. But what if the answer is more simple than all of that? What if it's simply the fact that optimists, who constantly see the glass as half-full just notice more avenues to success? If we only see what we want to see, a pessimist will see the road to failure even if a path to success were to be right beside them.
At the end of the day, the big questions are is this tendency we have as people good or bad, and what, if anything should we do about it? In some ways it is probably highly beneficial to us that we automatically filter so much out. There's a lot going on in the world, and even the most observant of people really can't take it all in. Our subconscious is smart enough to take care of all this excess information for us, letting us see things that mean something to us.
This of course still leaves us with the responsibility of opening our eyes to the things we really want, instead of falling prey to what we might call bad observational habits. Lots of people waste their time on looking for things that they want to hate. Looking to things that we like or love instead would save a whole lot of unhappiness. Though we can't all be optimists, taking a little time to look for the good in situations would ease a lot of burdens on people. Stopping ourselves every once in a while and looking for something different would definitely be worthwhile, rather than searching only for the familiar. Robert Frost told us all to take "the road less traveled." I whole heartedly agree, but my first bit of advice would be to make sure that we look hard enough to find this road.
