Separate Realities

 

Photo by Alice Karayiannis

 We each live in different realities.

No matter how much we've been around certain people, observed their reactions and approaches to different situations and watched them grow, we'll never be able to understand them as fully as we think. No matter how close we are with certain people, to the extent that one would believe that our realities may be interlocking, our realities are, indeed, different.

Our experiences are never the same; each of us sees things differently. So much effort is wasted in trying to make others see things the way we see them. We argue with them, trying to prove our point, and become disappointed when they don't seem to understand something that is so obvious to us. 

That is why we must realise that every pair of eyes is different; each of us interprets the world the way we want to, the way we've learned to as we were growing up. There is no one, single reality which is consistent to all of us and we must respect this in order to understand other people and situations better.

***

"It is neurologically obvious that no two brains have the same genetically-programmed hard wiring, the same imprints, the same conditioning, the same learning experiences. We are all living in separate realities. That is why communication fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are so common. I say "meow" and you say "Bow-wow," and each of us is convinced the other is a bit dumb."

~ Robert Anton Wilson