highly sensitive power

Humans survive through automatic judgment – our minds excel at making instant assumptions. Not that cave – smells bad. He creeps me out. She’s hiding something. All fine and good, until we ignore input that challenges those assumptions.

In the serene first-class compartment of a TGV train in France last summer, the French businessman next to me exuded citified refinement. Extraordinary suit, laptop computer, file folders, serious focus, important work, all very contained and orderly and foreign. A bit scary, actually. Then his cell phone rang. Our compartment was filled with the sound of a crowing rooster and I had to add another facet to my view of the man, a facet involving a country house he pined for, or a dream of chucking it all for life on a farm.

People reveal themselves truthfully all around us all the time, revealing infinite dimensions. What data do we pass off as irrelevant, when actually it unfolds and complexifies? How paradoxical is the truth?

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

~ Anaïs Nin