Accepting Alternate Realities

Last night I watched a program on PBS, which was one installment in their series on the brain.

The Secret Life of the Brain

I really enjoyed this installment, which was primarily concerned with vision, and how complex the vision system is, and how it informs our unique reality.

The moderator of the program continually reinforced a concept those who read my blog know I support, that we all live in our own unique reality.

As the science of vision and it's complexity was explained, I wondered if my innate acceptance of the concept of unique realities is the product of the multiple realities I experience every day.  Let me explain.

I am extremely near-sighted.   The level of near-sightedness I experience dictates that I live in at least two distinct realities every day, the one without visual correction, and the one with visual correction.

It is for me, an entirely different reality.   The unfocused world isn't frightening to me, unless I can't find my glasses, and then it is terrifying.   I always carry a spare pair of glasses to keep my fear in check, because I truly have very limited function without my glasses.

The unfocused world does open up new possibilities for me.  I have learned to tell my dogs apart by the feel of their fur, Beaux is coarser, and Scarlett is softer.   I use my feet and hands differently to navigate without my glasses so that I don't bump into things or trip or fall.

I am never fully awake until I put my glasses on.   As long as I keep my glasses off, I stay in a state between asleep and awake.  I am way more in my head than outside it, because there is just light and color outside, unless an object is within inches of my eyes.

I discovered that I lived in a different reality from other people when I got my first pair of glasses at seven years old.   That was the first time in memory that I saw individual blades of grass, and individual leaves on trees.   I may have seen those things as a very small child, but my earliest memories of the world are like an impressionistic painting.  All light and color and soft edges blending together.

When I got my glasses, I found out that the world I had been living in was different from the world that normally sighted people saw all the time.   So, it never seemed foreign to me that we all live in our own reality.

I wonder if the softened world of my early childhood contributed to my idealism and overall optimism.  My world was soft and colorful, and by holding any object very close to my face I could turn it into something else.   Magic, simply by changing focal distance.

I wonder if this magical, but distorted perspective while my brain was learning to process information changed the way I process information.

Maybe I believe in magic so strongly because I witnessed it regularly while my brain was developing.

The point folks?  Whatever the unique circumstances that informed the development of your particular reality, they are yours.  Accepting that you are living in your own reality that never can be fully understood by anyone else provides the opportunity to accept that everyone is living in their own reality.

Arguing about whose reality is more valid is a waste of time, as each reality is the product of the way each individual's brain developed.

Just think of all you can learn about the alternate realities around you if you suspend judgement and listen, instead of argue.

What a wonderful voyage of discovery that could be!