It's not just our bodies. Our minds fit, too.
In which I consider how perception and interpretation work together
When we fit together in a relationship, even the most fleeting relationship, as the one we have with a salesperson who helps us find a pair of black tights, it is as if we’re in a dance. Our bodies move together and get work done as if choreographed.
Even more so when we fit together in a long-lasting relationship, such as the one we have with our mother or father. In long-lasting relationships, we dig behavioral and emotional grooves that determine our dance steps. Especially under conditions of stress.
But it’s not just our bodies and emotions that fit into relational dances. Our minds do, too.
This is not news. We all know our minds fit with the world through perception, through our senses. Obviously, we cannot perceive anything our bodies are not equipped to perceive. We cannot see viruses, for example. (Would that we could!!!) Our eyes are just not made to take in that level of data.
But what do we perceive? We’re led to believe that whatever our five senses take in is basically truth. I mean, pain is pain. Smells are smells. Color is color. Etc. (Color blindness and synesthesia, of course, suggest it’s not that simple.)
But do we perceive all stimuli that our bodies are equipped to perceive? No way! We’d be overrun! No, we’re selective. Like, we see some things — I don’t think I miss one dirty dish in the sink or article of clothing on the floor — and completely miss others.
My husband is an amazing example. He can sleep through just about anything, including 10 minutes of fever-pitched infant squealing (that was way back in the day). He sleeps like a log no matter what sounds fill the space around him because he learned, when he was growing up, to screen out the sound of his sister practicing her flute at midnight. He just doesn’t hear this stuff.
Might I add? My husband is a musician. He is trained to hear minute sounds like one sharp note in a thick chord. But he doesn’t hear disturbing sounds at night.
Not because the sounds don’t exist. They most definitely do (I can attest to that!). But because he no longer fits with those data. Fitting with those data would have threatened his survival growing up. Right? He wouldn’t have gotten enough sleep. My husband’s selective deafness is very adaptive.
So one way our minds fit with the world is by selecting the stimuli we’re going to notice. Another way our minds fit with the world is by interpreting the stimuli we select.
Back to me: When I see dirty dishes in the sink or dirty clothes or — gasp! — bath towels on the floor, my response is instantaneous and irresistible: I wash those dishes and pick up those clothes. Cuz someone’s got to. And if I don’t, something bad is going to happen.
What is this bad thing that’s going to happen? I don’t know. Chaos. Loss of control. I’m not quite sure because I’ve never let the dirty dishes or clothes lie around long enough to find out. I’m just that anxious.
This anxiety, which I’ve felt for years and years, has ossified into a powerful belief: that I am the only responsible person around. That I am the competent one. Therefore, it’s got to be me who makes everything right.
This grandiose belief is so entrenched that I don’t even notice it. I just act it out. Automatically.
Of course, the flip side of this belief — the necessary flip side — is that everyone around me is irresponsible and incompetent.
Which in a way they are. Because I swoop in and clean up after them before they have a chance to circle back and do it themselves. They never have to even notice the messes they’ve made when they’re living with me. One might say those messes are my creation because it is I who notices them, who deems them “messes” in the first place.
My mind selects data from the world around me and interprets it. Or interprets what’s around me in order to guide my selection (and, by the way, keep me safe). Ugh! Which is it?
From the point of view of my heroes Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, who talk a lot about how we fit in the world, it’s both. Simultaneously. A dance. A complex, two-way, co-created, dynamic collaboration.
The thing that’s important about this right now, in this post, is that our minds make it so for us. Every moment of every day. We scan the world not just to perceive it but to interpret it, to find evidence that confirms our beliefs
about ourselves (I’m the only one who can or will do this)
about others (they are so incompetent and thoughtless!)
and about the world (chaos is right around the corner).
It goes without saying that we generally find the evidence we’re looking for. Which deepens our beliefs, even when those beliefs are painful and maladaptive.
So our minds fit in the world. Better yet, it’s like they pull the world in to fit around us. We’re confirmation bias machines! We think there’s such a thing as objectivity, but we’re wrong. Our organisms make us inescapably subjective. And, if we don’t pay attention, our minds can trap us into fits that seem natural but keep us and others miserable.
Our work is to start noticing the things our automatic mind-fits require us to miss: the fact that dirty dishes do not actually equate with chaos; the fact that others are not necessarily incompetent or irresponsible; the power of asking others what dirty dishes mean to them and to compare their interpretations with our own; our right to ask others to help out.
It’s ironic and kind of awesome: The very part of us that helps lock us into maladaptive fits — our mind — is the very part of us that can change those fits. Through self-awareness and introspection. Through the deliberate embrace and practice of honesty, vulnerability, courage, and faith. Through informed experimentation. This power kind of — forgive me — blows my mind.