I’ve been thinking of truth and the way we unsee it, daily.
I was listening to one of my favorite podcast, The Ezra Klein Show, where the host, Ezra Klein (journalist, author, co-founder of Vox media) interviewed Alison Gopnik (a professor of psychology known for her work on cognitive and language development in children), and they talked about the difference between how children look at the world versus how adults do.
Klein talks about children’s “ability to be open to a connection that maybe does not fit out pre-existing model of the world.” Young children especially look around at the world and come up with a theory and then they get more information and they shift or let go of this theory and come up with another. But adults are so set on their models, so set on arguing and being right. We dread compromise and change, and in order to avoid the latter, we wear blinders. Constantly. Only checking certain news sources, only reading genres we know. We are so set on hating poetry because it’s esoteric, on homemade being better than store bought, on less being worse, on cereal only being breakfast for children. Set on not learning a new skill, on not doing the things (getting outside, caring for others, caring for ourselves) to get us out of our funk.
Things I’m reminded of: the difference between correlation and causation in AP Stats, when our textbook explained that you may see that when air conditioning sales go up, ice cream sales also go up. But it’s not that air conditioners cause more ice cream sales; in fact, they’re both caused by a third variable: warmer weather. Summer. The thing behind the whir of air conditioners and the melting cones: the backdrop of summer.
I think as an adult, I look for the backdrop less and less. Mostly because I don’t spend time enough. I am so set in my ways, so set in getting on to the next thing, in marking things off the to-do list. And so each day I sew these blinders of busy-ness and habit, thicker and thicker, ignoring more and more of the world because it would be new and confusing and I might be bad at that new thing if I tried it, so let’s just not.
I think now of what backdrops lay behind my theories about the world.
Here are a few: that if people like me, they will love me. If I please people, they will take care of me and I will feel content. That other people are in charge of my joy. That what men may think about me is more important than what I think or feel about me. That if it’s easy, it’s not the right thing. That certain ways of life are better than others.
Perhaps if I had the childlike openness that Klein and Gopnik talk about, then I would be able to shift my theories when presented with new information. How I see that many people like me, but I do not feel love from them. That I have learned how to take care of myself better than many others ever have, and that people I didn’t think liked me that much actually care for me a lot a lot.
And maybe, then I could begin to pull back the curtains and see the third thing that lays behind these things. So behind “other people are in charge of my joy” I see that other people cause me joy and also pain, and that much (all?) of this is actually refracted through the lens of my own perceptions.
I cause myself joy and pain. And my thoughts are bigger than the person they are about.
I am more powerful than I think I am.
I want to keep pulling back this curtain, to find more of what is behind it.
Prompts / thoughts:
What’s one of your theories about happiness? About the way your life should be lived?
What backdrop lays behind one of your theories?
How are you not a child anymore?
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