Have you heard the saying, “We don't see things as they really are, we see things as we are?”
It means that we are influenced by everything that has gone into making us who we are. All our experiences, all our personal beliefs, our culture and our worldview. Everything that we see is filtered through our lens.
And our lens is not like anyone else's. We all see things a little differently. (Sometimes, very differently).
Just knowing this can help us to be aware of our assumptions, to challenge our thinking. The saying, “You can't know another person until you have walked in their shoes,” is another way of saying, we can't make judgments about another person without looking at the situation through their eyes.
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are
We paint the world with our own colors, we shape it with our own scars
We don’t hear things as they are, we hear them as we are
We filter the sounds with our own ears, we tune them with our own hearts
We don’t feel things as they are, we feel them as we are
We touch the world with our own hands, we sense it with our own parts
We don’t know things as they are, we know them as we are
We learn the world with our own minds, we understand it with our own arts
But we can also see things as they could be, we can see them as we aspire
We can create the world with our own dreams, we can transform it with our own fire
Remember the next time you are seeing something very different from someone else. Try looking through their lens and you won't get tipped over as much.