Perception and Reality
By: Pamela Leavey On: March 29, 2009 at 9:25 pm
I was contemplating perception and reality today. It’s such a complex philosophical debate.
Wikipedia notes that “perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information” while “Reality, in everyday usage, means “the state of things as they actually exist”.”
So the question I ask is… Is one person’s perception another’s reality or is one person’s reality another’s perception?
What I perceive is not always the reality of a situation and so it is for each of us.
In search of the perception vs reality debate I went seeking quotes on perception, to find this inspiring quote from the French Impressionist Camille Pissarro:
“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.”
And this great quote from French novelist and essayist, Marcel Proust:
“The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
On to reality, the profound Kahlil Gibran says:
“The reality of the other person lies not in what he reveals to you, but what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says, but rather to what he does not say.”
Perhaps, we can roll ourselves up in perceptions and not understand the reality… Or we can see and listen and thus understand better the reality of all things. Is this not one of the great conundrums of life?
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