Perception An Illustration
Our emotional state depends largely on how we perceive things. Our perceptions color and guide our every action, whether we are aware of this or not. It drives us from a deeper level than our conscious thoughts. I will share with you an incident which happened many years ago to illustrate how our perceptions really work.
A few years ago one of our relatives came visiting our family and in the course of the conversation he said somethings that has hurt us deeply.
As always in the case of family our conversation comes down to children and how they are doing. This person asked us about our son and his plans for his life. We explained to him how he dreams of being a neurosurgeon and that would mean another 6-8 years of studies beyond his basic medical degree.
This person inhaled sharply and said," your returns on investment are really poor." (Let me explain this clearly, Asian parents spend every penny they earn for their children’s education and future) He then bragged about how his son would be earning the very next year. We simply ignored what he said and politely changed the topic.
How Perception Changes with Need
A couple of later, the same person's mother was critically ill and he was calling us and our son five to six times a day to double check on the line of treatment the doctors there were pursuing in his mother's case.
The words that he had used a long time ago had hurt my son deeply. I had to speak to him repeatedly to assure him that he was no burden to us and his dreams were ours. Yet, being who he is my son spoke reassuringly to this man down in his time of stress and pain and helped him make the right choices with regards to the treatment.
How Perception Changes Lives
What makes people so mean that they talk without caring how their words affects others? It is their perception, this man was looking at his son and ours as an investment, not as people. To him they were just some money-making machines, not real people with dreams, desires and ambitions of their own. Even his son's life was only about him and about his investments. It came from a deep sense of insecurity and selfishness.
We need to examine if our perception of everything in life colored by money? Is it filtered only by what we want and our desires but never about others? It could be other things than just money, like jealousy, greed etc. Life is already is a rat race for many, because they are after what money can get them and are always in competition with one another. This robs people of their happiness and peace.
We are different and so are our dreams
What we fail to understand is that one person's life could be very different from that of the other. They may not even be in the same race and yet they believe that they are competing with each other.
One person's goals could be so very different from what the other pursues, his/her dreams or just his/her's to follow, it is not for others to complete with.
In this mindless race we lose our balance and love for life. Our focus sharply turns from happiness to ambition, meaningless ambition at that.
At the root of it all we have failed to understand ourselves, failed to understand our dreams and lost focus along the way. This could result in only one thing - deep dissatisfaction.
Is it even worth the pain? Should we not focus on understanding ourselves and our deep longings which could make our lives more livable?
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond.
