Fresh
Thoughts
“There
are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of
perception.”
Aldous
Huxley
I woke
this morning with the words “fresh thoughts” in my mind. Lately, I’ve avoided
the news, both national and local, and even NPR has provided less background conversation
to my day. There is an element of news exhaustion involved, but also, I feel a
little safer not being tuned in all the time. I did catch part of an interview
this week between Mary Louise Kelley (NPR), and three journalists from
different networks—Ayesha Rascoe (PBS), Leslie Stall (CBS), and Jake Tapper
(CNN). Kelley asked these prominent political commentators for their
perspective about the future of both journalism and American politics. I’m sorry
to report that they didn’t have much to say that was positive. If we continue
to have a population that looks at a news event and interprets it from polar-opposite
ends of the spectrum, we will never achieve agreement on what the problems truly
are and how to solve them. Are we doomed to stay a divided country forever? This
perspective is disheartening to me. Reporting the actual truth of an event will
be of no consequence if the same perception is not shared by all. Where does
that leave us?
Perception
is everything. Just as Huxley says, between the known and the unknown there
lies a vast plane of perception—and it is the perceived event and not the
actual event that shapes our perspective on the world. We literally create the
meaning of events in the moment, or in retrospect, based upon our individual
interpretation and often, our emotional response, to them. There are people we encounter,
both in our daily lives, and in the news, who never have to open their mouths
for us to recoil. We have a visceral reaction without hearing one word they say.
In the political arena, Donald Trump is one of those people, and so is Hillary
Clinton. The “Nevers,” as I call them. It is not that they change us—they are
who they are—it is our perception of them that we see, and therefore they are
that to us. We create them according to our perspective.
It is
important for us to step back from this if we can. It is preconceived, prejudicial,
and distorted. All of it reflects our personal beliefs, our history, and our individual
worldview. At this point, reality has faded into oblivion, and we live in this
divided world of alternative facts and opposing interpretations. And no one is
served by it.
Each one
of us could, if we chose, examine our own perceptions, and then critically
evaluate which ones are based in fact, and which are purely emotional and
tribal in nature. Perhaps we could also track back to where, what, and who
influences our understanding of events, and whether they serve our greater good. And then
we could decide what is truly important to us—do we want to be divided, or do
we want to find common ground on which to stand? What would happen if we opened
the doors of perception and let some fresh thoughts blow in?
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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