Play with filters. Learn that this is how we are trained to see everything around us, through a series of crafted filters in our minds. 
Just as you cant see me clearly, neither can you clearly see perspectives in everything around you from ideas that come through your screens and mold your minds. Everything we see around us is an illusion, a trick of the light.
What has been done to our minds is called programming. It's like putting gauze over your eyes and earmuffs over your ears so everything is a tiny bit muffled. Then something is repeated over and over for recognition and familiarity. We like familiarity.
Every time we adjust to a little more gauze and more repetition, we become really quick at identifying content we are used to seeing. Trying to become familiar with other content becomes work, even drudgery. It feels better being familiar.
Eventually the gauze becomes thick enough that it takes a really strong light to show us what we can see. Anything not highlighted is dismissed because it seems too dark to see. Imagine someone without gauze trying to tell you what is hard for you to see. It doesn't seem real.
Once in awhile a person will realize that they can start removing layers of the gauze and push back the earmuffs. It's kind of cringey at first, too much too fast, hard work to sort it out. It's not familiar. We get headaches. Putting the gauze back feels better.
And that's ok. Too much too fast is hard. But curiosity might have a person trying that again. And maybe again. And soon it becomes almost a game taking off a little more gauze. A challenge after all that dull repetition.
Suddenly familiarity might feel like a trap. A cage. A mind cage. It's all right for hanging out with others, but on the side it starts feeling better to get that lump of gauze out of the way to see better. As we get used to more and more real vision, we want even more.
At some point, some people cast off all the gauze and toss the earmuffs in the trash. That 80s music? Yeah, that was decades ago. That glitzy thing? Yeah, that's future junk. That familiarity? Yeah, that's baby stuff. Filters are nice and all, but they actually suck.
Some people hide in filters. I do that on bad days. Certain songs, old TV shows, triggered food binges, amIright? Comfort. But all it takes to clear my mind again is opening a window and feeling real air move around. Or smelling rain. Or hearing a distant sound. Real reality.
Being in the moment feels good. In the moment I feel like I'm part of the earth, part of the world, part of the people. I feel free to be me. I leave behind the filters and enjoy my day because I want to, not because the light through the filters told me what I should do or feel.
And that is our world today. Two worlds, actually. One world is muffled and filled with words and light. The other world is open to our response to it. We can change it, savor it, whatever comes into our minds without the filters. Like maybe our own real thoughts for a change.
@threadreaderapp please unroll
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