Monday, January 18, 2010

Perception is Not Reality


It's 2am and I can't sleep. Again. This insomnia thing is really hanging on for dear life. I hate being up at this time of night. Except for the consistent sound of traffic outside my window, I feel isolated~ not lonely, just awake on my own, with no one to talk to... and so I play out what is in my head onto this blank page. Lulu is asleep, upside down and with her paws covering her face, at the end of my bed. I can see Christmas lights glowing in the apartment across the alley. They keep them on all night, every night. And I'm thinking about people.

It is a lesson I would rather not learn over and over again and yet I do. Why are people never in reality the way I see them in my mind? I know that sounds weird and I don't mean it in a bizarre, controlling way. More in a disappointed, seriously?! way. It is so easy to think you know someone when you have seen them over a long period of time. You don't even have to really know each other and yet from repeated interaction you feel you know them, what they are really like, what kind of person they seem to be, what they value. 

And then you find out things that are so absolutely to the contrary, that they are not at all what you had thought they were for years. It is such a shock, a loss even, because the person you thought existed, in fact, doesn't. It was all simply made up, or perceived (incorrectly), in your mind. Remember that stupid old adage, "you can't judge a book by its cover?" Here is mine... you can't know what someone is like without actually knowing them. I would like to assume that everyone I seem to know and like are sweet, kind, shy, nice. Reality check? They aren't. This is not cynicism. This is growing up and learning yet another lesson. One I value.

So maybe it's okay... no, maybe it's really freakin' good I don't truly know these people in the first place. Disappointment, be damned. 

(Image via Vi.sualize, song lyric Bixby Canyon Bridge by Death Cab for Cutie)

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