The Hidden Cost to Perception

Rarely in Nature do we find simple shapes like rectangles. More often we see complex structures that require deeper analysis. Much of what you need to know about a rectangle is quite simple to assess. For example, the area of a rectangle is found by multiplying its length by its width, but that formula that doesn’t work when you're trying to determine, say, the area underneath a roller coaster ride. For that more complicated situation, you need Calculus, a higher level of mathematics wherein you calculate the area under a curve using limits and sums of rectangle areas using an integral. A simple way to think about integration is this: Imagine you want to tile the bottom of one of those swanky and curvy Las Vegas hotel swimming pools, but you can only use rectangular shaped tiles. If you place those tiles across the floor of the pool, you could cover a lot of area, but it wouldn’t be exact, you would still have uncovered spaces, especially around the border of the pool. If you had the option of slicing each rectangle in half, repeatedly, as the width of those tiles got skinnier or closer to zero, you could get closer at filling in all the gaps and covering the entire bottom of the pool. Ultimately, integration aims towards wholeness.

The concept of an integral can be applied to our lives and it gives us a strategy for a deeper understanding of ourselves and those around us. It’s human nature to feel more comfortable with known quantities. Often we try to use the most immediate and generalized way of understanding a person, our perception. Our senses translate what we see, hear, and feel into an immediate way of describing people with generic labels of race, age, gender, political affiliation or status that we ascribe value too. But, perception is a tricky thing. While it allows us to quickly process a lot of information, it’s ripe for missing details that can lead us to inaccurate characterizations. Using gross approximations to understand the entirety of a person, or ourselves, comes at a cost.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” ~William Blake

All of us have an experience in which someone problematically assumed they knew all about us after one glance or conversation. We act quickly to categorize a person that is unfamiliar to us or who we can’t immediately place in a neat and tidy box. One night during my first year in college in Atlanta, I was at a McDonald’s drive-through window picking up my food when the cashier asked me, “What is you?” As a mixed girl from Cali, I was not a common phenomenon in the South. But, knowing I’m biracial doesn’t tell you about the moments I’ve benefited from privilege or the times I was hurt by prejudice. And knowing I’m from California doesn’t tell you about the first kiss that happened at the house party on 54th Street or what it was like to get my heart broken sitting on the grass in front of Lake Merritt. Questions disguised as status checks, rarely lead to answers that tell you something interesting or important about a person. What school did you go to? What do you do? They just serve as vehicles for providing boxes we can measure so that we can summarize someone on the spot. This way of approximating who a person is allows us to chart a distance between them and ourselves, but there can be a price to pay for being wrong in our assumptions. We stand the risk of alienating or reacting out of fear to those that could be our allies or attaching too much importance to those who don’t really care about our well-being.

When I was in middle school it was considered ‘uncool’ to wear a backpack using both straps. My backpack was always heavy with textbooks, so as soon as I was out of eyesight range from school, I’d slip the second strap onto my shoulder knowing it was unlikely I would run into anyone on my walk home. But, I almost got busted one afternoon when I saw the neighborhood cutie a block away getting ready to cross my path! I quickly released one of the backpack straps off my shoulder to let him know that I was one of the cool kids. In little and in bag ways, we often try to shape the perception of who we are in order to either find favor or avoid rejection. Sometimes, we create shields out of job titles, appearances, or addresses that protect us. At other times, we put forward a representation of who we feel another person needs or desires to make relationships work. These betrayals of the truth of who we really are can ultimately be more painful than any rejection. Ironically, being committed to a limited or contrived idea of ourselves often establishes or validates the erroneous belief that we’re not enough.

“Never limit yourself because of others’ limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.” ~ Mae Jemison

Perception is geared towards survival. Once I met someone who reminded me of a person from my past who was known for humiliating and tearing down colleagues publicly in meetings. Without thinking, I immediately began to position myself on the defense, creating all kinds of thoughts in my mind about them after one conversation: I know how to deal with them, I’ve seen this before, I’m not letting this happen again, etc. I had to stop myself in the midst of these very engaging mental stories to say to myself, I don’t know them, we’ve only had one conversation and they just triggered a bad memory. Now, there are some experiences of betrayal, hurt, or deception that leave a wound so deep it takes years to heal, so in the meantime we remain vigilant to ensure we do not enter harm's way again. Our perception becomes deputized to keep us safe at all costs. But relationships can be an unfortunate casualty of this approach when reactions occur because of a perceived threat rather than an actual threat. Healthy boundaries are important, but when we are on the constant watch out for signals of danger it’s easy to feel our judgement is for good cause, hampering a chance at authentic connection with those we love and stifling opportunities for healing.

Ideally, we would commit to curiosity and keep refining our inquiries about people and situations that we encounter.   If we leave too many slivers of truth uncovered, we can miss the most salient details of a person’s life. When we leap to conclusions too quickly, we are apt to shun, tell someone they don’t belong, decide if someone is worth listening too, or determine they are “other.”  We cause unnecessary harm. Alternatively, we can iterate on inquires to create smaller  and more specific slices of information that paint a more complete picture. It’s not a finite endeavor though. We can take a lifetime getting to know each other, never running short of questions, sharing tears and laughter along the way. Certainly it’s worth it.  Sharing the vulnerable parts of ourselves provides an opening for genuine points of connection over shared experiences of the human condition, it smooths down the rough edges of life like waves over ocean glass. If we could see each aspect of our personality or life experience as an important brush stroke in the unique masterpiece that represents all of who we are, without shame or apology,  we gain the opportunity to experience true connection and unshakeable self-acceptance.

We need each other. Each of us acts independently with our own individualized purpose, yet, we exist in a space wherein we have interdependent societal roles as builders, soldiers, farmers, artists, healers, inventors and teachers. What if we contemplated perception in a different way and pledged to see each person as a critical part of our world? What if we acted like every facet of our being was essential to our own wholeness? Our joy and freedom is interconnected with those who experience life differently from ourselves. Committing to seeing one another through a lens of love can dissolve our fear of the unknown, and create a world where each of us is truly seen and valued as essential to the whole.