Filtering the world
The filter we apply to how we see the world can make a real difference between us seeing opportunity or adversity. I am endlessly fascinated about just how our thinking is shaped by our experiences, by what we read and watch and the resulting way we understand things.
A conversation on a train
Let me share just a small and somewhat mundane example of what I mean here.
On the train into London this morning, I sat near a regular fellow commuter. He had returned to the UK with his family to live last year, having worked and lived in Singapore for 20 years.
We got chatting and both of us being fellow Brits soon got round to the topic of weather! I made a comment that daylight was reducing each day as we head towards the last weeks of summer, that the mornings were just a little cooler and that I really wasn’t looking forward to the point where we would enter the winter months once more. (Not to say that I can’t see the beauty of a crisp winter day and the changes in nature of the new seasons - but given the choice I would rather not have those months.)
My fellow commuter, having lived in Singapore for 20 plus years, listened carefully, then told me of the little variability in daylight hours and weather patterns there. He said in the earlier months and years of moving there he had valued the change in seasons and the joy of 6 weeks of summer we in the UK may get (if we are lucky); they seemed precious and different to the day-to-day of the rest of the year.
He talked about the crisp days of autumn and winter, when the air smells differently and the wildlife changes, the streets of the city are lit earlier and that all of this had a special magic for him which he missed.
Different perspectives
We laughed over the different perspective we had over a typically British discussion. What it brought home to me was just how important it is to consider the filter we place over any given topic or situation. To look for the good, not just the downside, of any given situation and to always be open to other ways of looking at things.
It is so easy to be restricted in our thinking and miss the opportunity to experience something good or, at least, better than we had expected, or to not see the alternative paths we could take when looking at options and fresh ways to do things.
I for one will now look forward to days in autumn and winter instead of feeling negatively about the colder seasons. Importantly I will remember that we experience the world through the filters that we automatically apply, and I will take time to consider other ways to see whatever is in front of me just waiting to be explored.