“Things are not what they seem, first impression deceives many, the intelligence of a few perceive what has been carefully hidden”. Phaedrus c.444 – 393 BC. Phaedrus, whose name translates to bright or radiant was an ancient aristocrat who enjoyed the company of philosophers. He was particularly interested in the nature of reality. He spent long hours asking himself the following questions: do we see things how they are or only how they seem to us? Is seeing believing? Can we trust our senses? How do we know how something really is?
“The mind is strange in the way that it picks and chooses what it wants to see. The way people let their emotions, conditions, and state of mind guide their perspective ultimately decides who they are as a person.”
Maya Reed
Things are not what they seem, the first impression deceives many
The text below is an extract written by my eldest daughter Maya which introduces Part Two of my book “This Is Your Quest”
The view from my window – by Maya Reed.
No matter a person’s race, gender, status, or health, everyone has a window that acts as their unique glimpse into the world. However, this window varies greatly from person to person, and any aspect about someone can determine what he or she sees out of it. The view from these windows is in a constant state of change and can be altered by something as substantial as how we are raised or our lifestyle, to something as trivial as how we are feeling on a particular day.
When looking out of this figurative window, things such as the time of day can reflect a specific state of mind. In times of happiness, the beauty of the world hits me like a truck. This is when I look out my window and see a bright sunrise marking the dawn of a new day. As the sun makes it steady ascent, it brings the excitement of new possibilities with it. Light bursts forth from the horizon in an onslaught of colors, forcing the darkness into a hasty retreat. In these moments, everything is picture perfect and it only magnifies with the growing light – the world radiates alacrity.
The sky is painted in stunning streaks of red, pink, purple, and blue and the birds sing their delight to the heavens. With sunlight already streaming through the window, my eyes turn to a world blanketed in tranquility. Leaves dance in the wind, taking my mind with them. People amble down the street, content clear on their faces. I see a couple as they walk by my window. They stroll hand in hand, simply appreciating each other’s touch. Birds soar through the sky with effortless grace, trees sway in the wind, and everything is infinitely beautiful. I can see all the wonder the world has to offer.
Somewhere, in the distance, a newborn takes its first breath. Elsewhere, jobs are being offered, vows are taken, homes are found, love is declared, sickness is overcome, and countless more bring a smile to my face. It is as if the sun’s rays illuminate anything and everything worthwhile and lift them up on a shinning pedestal. In this merry state of mind, negativity is easily overpowered, but the light that ensures this sanctuary is not constant.
Light brings wonder to people’s lives, but it is not possible for light to exist without darkness. I once again find myself taking a moment to properly look out my window. However, after a long and strenuous day, the sunset is upon me, and as I watch, the sun is slowly but surely beating back under the horizon.
My eyes scan what’s below me and a vague familiarity resides beneath the layers of dense darkness, but my optimism died with the sun. The light is gone, and with it, the happiness it brought. Now, all the wrongs the light refused to expose become painfully clear. In my mind’s somber restlessness, the shadows jump out with murderous intent, and the darkness is suffocating.
The same couple walks past my window, but this time I notice the strange tightness in which he grips her hand, and her refusal to look him in the eye. The amblers’ steps are reduced to depressed plodding, and even the breeze seems to whisper threats. It soon becomes achingly clear that the songbirds fled long ago, and the silence they leave behind is deafening. The glass is the only thing that separates me from the world where evil lurks around every corner, but the darkness threatens to break the seal.
In an instant, the darkness thickens and every shadowed window hides a depressed, overworked child. It is far too easy to notice that every second, a driver’s mistake becomes a death sentence, tears tun like rivers, blood taints the soil, someone takes the fatal jump, maledictions are hurled at one another, lives are shattered, and the savage reality of this world cracks down like a whip. In the same way, the light blinded me to anything I didn’t want to see, the darkness is enough to suppress everything worth seeing.
The mind is strange in the way that it picks and chooses what it wants to see in the world. Some days it will go through the terrifying, disheartening, and even confusing process of freezing to gawk at the shadows. Other days it will inexplicably decide to turn it back to what lies in the darkness and instead ogle at the brilliance of the sun.
In fact, the true nature of the world is rarely seen. Constantly fluctuating emotions act as lenses for our window. They can taint, brighten, dull, enhance, blind, illuminate and change the view of different surroundings. The way people let their emotions, conditions, and state of mind guide their perspective ultimately decides who they are as a person.
Things are not what they seem, first impression deceives many, the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden
‘The eyes are useless when the mind is blind”
African Proverb
The truth is not the truth anymore. Video games aren’t real life. Gambling isn’t really investing. Social media isn’t really social. The news isn’t real facts anymore but more like a propaganda machine.
The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent. The media will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. This is the sort of propaganda tactic that I would call psychological warfare.
Malcolm X
We think that we are living in a peaceful time, but in fact, life is a battlefield. We have a tendency to portray battlefields with imagery of soldiers being stuck in trenches firing at each other or imagery of civilians having to hunker down the basement whilst bombs are being dropped from the sky; some battlefields are not so obvious to spot but they are there, nonetheless. Whether you realize it or not you are living in a world where psychological warfare, information warfare, financial warfare spiritual warfare is a common occurrence.
In life, if you are stuck in your own self-righteous and rigid way of doing things then you will lack the mobility to advance. Stiffness of thoughts originates from an inability to think critically preferring instead to submit yourself to groupthink and an ideology without questioning it. The world is not black and white, there are several shades of grey in between. Things change all the time. What is true today may not be true tomorrow. You don’t need a group, a leader, or some media platform to tell you how to think and how to act. You can think for yourself. Passive non-critical thinkers take a simplistic view of the world. They see things in black and white, as either-or, rather than recognizing a variety of possible understandings. They see questions as yes or no, with no subtleties. They fail to see linkages and complexities. They fail to recognize related elements. They take their facts as the only relevant ones. They take their perspectives as the only sensible ones. They consider their goal as the only valid one.
Don’t let people put you into a box and stick a label on it, because that makes you predictable, vulnerable, and controllable. Be your own person, be curious about what’s going on, ask questions, spot all the inconsistencies. If you know how to observe, listen, think and act accordingly, you become a dangerous person.
“I’d rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.”
Unknown author
No one wants to hear this, but we are all being mind-controlled, and the truth is not true anymore. Where does human behavior come from? Behavior comes from our perception of an event or a situation. Where does perception come from? Perception comes from information received, be it from personal experience, newspaper or media. Controlling human perception can therefore become a weapon used to control what people think. The best way to do this would be to filter or censor the type of information that the public receives, or by using deceptive tactics such as subterfuge, propaganda, or misinformation to make the public believe something that is not true.
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”.
George Orwell
Life is not what it seems, first impression deceives many, the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.
And this my dear friend, Is Your Quest
Personal Note
In addition to publishing my articles on my website, I have also been publishing on Medium. I have been working closely for the past months with Data-Driven Investor (DDI) Publication. DDI has recently launched a new marketplace/platform where people can book a paid one-to-one session with an expert of their choice. DDI asked me to join their panel of advisors/experts in the Leadership, Coaching, and Personal Growth category. Here is my profile. If you wish to book a one-to-one chat with me you can do so on this platform.
For more on this subject you can purchase my book This is Your Quest online at BookLocker, from Amazon or from Barnes & Noble. The Ebook version is available on Amazon (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), Apple (iBooks) & Kobo. Check out my Amazon Author Page here or my listing on Booksradar.com
