Vision

Our life experiences color our perceptions of the world. This is something I harp on consistently as well attempt to be aware of within myself. I work feverishly to notice it, and make a concerted effort to interpret the various messages that scroll across the screen behind my eyes, because it is important to acknowledge where these thoughts come from and choose whether or not to accept them. Our views are valid and true to the best of our knowledge, that is to say “True to us”, and I have no intention of invalidating any personal views, but I do think they very effectively blind us. One of the most important messages I have ever heard a college professor pass along came from the tenured vulgar mouth of my research methods instructor.

Dr. Jake Jac. is a bald man of small stature, while bearing an intimidating demeanor, and a shamelessly self-centered arrogance. He and his loyal entourage of TAs walked into class on the first day of the semester, he placed a notebook down on a small podium, and he said:

“There is no such thing as faith, love, free will, or any of that bullshit, and if you don’t like it get the fuck out now because I don’t want to hear any bitching.”

Not a soul shifted in their seat. How does one respond to such a statement? PSYC 290 was a core requirement. I feel like most stayed right where they were due to an uneasiness as to the consequences of exiting at that moment . . . not me, I wasn’t going anywhere. I loved it, well, I was thoroughly intrigued and in wholehearted agreement. Every student in the college of social and behavioral sciences had to get through that class . . . and get through him. It was kind of an initiation class that I’m surprised to this day I got through, because after the first few lectures, where he spoke for two hours tearing down all of our irrational belief structures, it got excruciatingly tedious and boring. He would speak nonstop and the only other sounds to be heard were the frantic keystrokes of every over-achiever attempting to capture his exact words. The man stated at the beginning, along with his “Reign of terror” statement, that he’d rather we remain engaged and hear what he had to say than miss it all trying to take notes. I don’t often take notes anyway, or read textbooks for that matter; I found his lectures online and listened to them over again before tests.

He was a hard-nosed scientist who was analytical and open-minded enough to even recognize that all of our sciences could be complete garbage as well, even with their methods of checks and balances. I respected him, and even went to a couple of his office hours to ask him questions that I thought might leave him with a new angle to consider. When I asked him for a recommendation for graduate school he scoffed at me, saying that he didn’t write letters for undergrads who hadn’t worked in his lab. Made sense, there were over 200 kids in the class, but I pushed it. I revealed to him that I was a Navy Vet, stated my case that all of my classes were astronomically huge, and that as sad as it was I had had more face time with him as a professor than anyone else. He told me he’d consider it further and thanked me for my service, but I never heard anything else and was too irritated to be persistent. I remember him well though, not only because it was one of the most informative classes I have ever taken, but because he taught an idea, I thought I was one of the only people to grasp, on a large scale.

He said: “It isn’t important whether or not you believe or agree with anything. It might be to us personally, but who the fuck are we? What’s important is that you understand everything for what it is.”

Like I said, I loved it . . . even if love is just some made-up concept to describe an emotion we have no idea why we feel. Mostly because the truth is this, we are all wounded in one way or another. Mental wounds are the signs of a life thoroughly lived, just as lacerations, bumps, bruises, broken bones and all the rest are the physical signs that you are happening.

Mental wounds are no different from the physical; they alter, to whatever degree, the manner in which we interact with the world. When you rip off a scab too many times you get a scar, if you cut the cutaneous tissue deep enough you get a scar . . . well what’s different? We have psychological scars just as we would superficial, and for quite the same reasons. Our triggers get tripped, whether or not it is a good thing we remember certain occurrences is debatable, but we do, and we are constantly ripping our wounds open and creating the blemishes that tattoo our minds. This is where schemas come from, this is why we approach situations as though they are the same as ones we’ve previously engaged in, this is why our relationships tend to look, for better or worse, similar in a lot of ways. We have expectations of our environment based on what has had an impact on us, and it shapes our values and points of view.

Just remember this though, your views are exactly those, “Yours.” They do not reflect an objective view of reality, but one seen through a lens. It’s like looking through a kaleidoscope. If we are conscious of this, then we can learn to accept and understand things for what they are, and operate much more efficiently to address the systems that surround us, and leave this place with some cool looking scars of its own.