Quote of the Day and Learning to Live

"We cannot expect anyone to help us live; we must discover how to do it by ourselves."

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow

Each and every one of us has a unique life.  We have all experienced different things and we have also experienced the same things differently.  Ever wonder who is mistaken when you start to tell an amusing anecdote about something and someone else who was there stops you by saying..."no, no, that's not what happened, it actually happened like this..."

Which of you is right?  In all likelihood, you both are.  We all see the world through our own filtered lens.  Our minds cannot remember every detail, even though we believe that we have total recall - this is the very thing that makes eye witnesses the most useless aspect of court cases, especially multiple eye witnesses.

First of all, based on all that we've learned and experienced so far, our minds fixate on things for reasons that subconsciously make sense to us.  Much like a fragmented hard drive, there are gaps in our memories of events and so our mind fills the gaps with things that make sense based on what we already know.

Have you ever seen the video of the basketball game where a gorilla walks onto the middle of the court?  Virtually nobody ever sees the gorilla because they know they are watching a basketball game and that experience already makes sense.  When these same people see the video again and the facilitator points out the gorilla, people feel ridiculously stupid and yet their brain performed just as it always does.

Ever driven all the way to work and then wondered how on earth you got there?  It wasn't that you were inattentive, it's just that your brain processed the routine as normal and since nothing stood out, it assumes it was like all the other drives to work.

But because each person has such a unique set of experiences and perspectives, each of us has to work out alone how we fit into the world around us.  Sometimes I have moments when I feel like I am out of place, especially in new situations - there goes my brain again, trying to match the new experience to all of the old ones.  

It's not an easy process, this figuring out how to live your life to its fullest.  As Confucius said:   

"I hear and I forget.  I see and I remember.  I do and I understand."

He also said: 

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step..."