It is interesting to me how each of us packages the information we have about life. We don’t start with a blank page. (\Some say we do \- either way…\) We arrive in a particular family, culture, time, and place. Then life starts adding information. What our parents tell us. What we experience. What happens to us. What hurts. What brings us joy. What we see other people do. What we read. What we’re taught to believe. What we’re taught to fear. All of it gets added to the package.
Over time, those experiences begin to form a lens through which we see the world. And the interesting thing is that we often forget we are looking through a lens. We simply think we are seeing reality as it is.
Two people can experience exactly the same event and come away with completely different understandings of what happened. Their histories are different, so the meaning they give the experience is different. One person may see danger where another sees opportunity. One may see rejection where another sees freedom. One may see something as an act of love while another sees the same thing as control.
The information is the same. The interpretation is different.
Eventually, some of that information becomes so deeply embedded that we stop thinking of it as information. It becomes truth. Not necessarily the truth, but our truth. It becomes part of the way we understand ourselves and the world around us.
That developmental process makes beliefs interesting. When I say, “This is what I believe,” there may be a whole history behind that statement. It may be what my parents believed. It may be what my community taught me. It may have come from something that happened to me when I was young. It may be something I needed to believe because it helped me make sense of a confusing world.
Once those pieces have been assembled, I begin living inside the story they create.
That’s a possible reason changing our minds can be so difficult. New information isn’t simply knocking on the door of our intellect. Sometimes it is knocking on the door of our identity.
Growing wiser isn’t simply about collecting more information, but about becoming aware of how we have packaged the information we already have.
Where did this belief come from? Why did I accept it? What experiences reinforced it? What information have I never considered? What have I automatically rejected because it didn’t fit the story I already had? And perhaps the hardest question of all: What if my understanding is incomplete or not true?
That is where “Know thyself” takes on a whole new meaning for me. Knowing myself isn’t just knowing my personality, preferences, strengths, and weaknesses. It means becoming aware of the lens through which I construct the world I experience.
Because once I can see the lens, I have a choice.
I can keep looking through it.
Or I can begin examining the lens itself.
Thoughts For Thinkers 