Perception

Have you ever seen something, but because of the circumstances you couldn’t quite figure out what it was, or what was happening? The other night, after a pretty long day, I took the dog out for a walk. She was bored because she’d been cooped up most of the day while The Bearded One and I were at work (and I was in class), and I was a little stressed out because group work in grad school isn’t much different than group work in any other forum. So, even though it was about 7:00pm, long after dark this time of year, we went out wandering. We live in the country, kind of, but there is a neighborhood less than a half mile up the road to the east, and we often walk/run there. So, we made it to the neighborhood, and had just turned around to come home when I saw lights up at the cemetery. This cemetery is on the outskirts of the southwest side of the neighborhood–there’s a gravel road that leads to it from the east, but no other paths to or from it, and it’s set apart a bit, so it’s kind of just in the middle of a farm field. The cemetery is actually featured in a lot of the pictures I use in this blog, like the one up above–it’s that clump of trees next to the rising sun.

It’s not unusual to see lights at the cemetery. People drive up there at night sometimes to…well, I don’t know what they do there at night. Seances? Moonlight trysts? Anyway, on this night the lights were different. They weren’t headlights. One light was above the other, not next to it. And then I realized the lights were moving…heading straight towards where Marty and I were on the road. To be clear, we were not on the road that leads to the cemetery. We were walking on a road heading west, away from the neighborhood, maybe a quarter of a mile straight north across a farm field from the cemetery. And these lights were just coming straight towards us. In the seconds that followed, my mind went through all of the things I thought it could be–maybe someone on a four wheeler or side-by-side with weirdly placed lights? Two snowmobiles in a line when there was no snow on the ground? But I knew it couldn’t be any of those things because I didn’t hear a motor.

I had sped up and tried to drag Marty along with me, but she had also noticed the lights heading our way. Unlike me, she wanted to go investigate, though, so I wasn’t having much success in getting her to book it out of there. At that point I was freaking out a little bit. I was in the dark, in an area with no streetlight close enough to help me see what was coming, alone except for my dog whose protective instincts I’ve luckily never had a need to test, and these lights were silently moving towards us faster than a person could walk, in a place I’ve never seen a person who wasn’t inside a tractor. So, naturally, I called The Bearded One. Just to let him know that if I didn’t make it home, I had probably been abducted by aliens, because that was where my brain kept going, even though I’m not sure I believe in extraterrestrial life–probably the result of listening to too many podcasts about the unexplained (I’m looking at you Unsolved Mysteries, and Supernatural with Ashley Flowers). The Bearded One answered, sounding concerned, probably because I don’t usually call him in the middle of a walk. I told him what was happening, and then, just like that, the lights went down into the ditch and up onto the road, and I could see the silhouette of a bicyclist turn and ride away from us into the neighborhood. It was just a person, wearing a headlamp, riding a bicycle with a headlight.

Yes, it’s still weird that they were riding a bicycle across a field from a cemetery at night, but I was walking my dog on the road at night with no light–that’s weird too, I guess. It’s actually quite possible that this nocturnal cyclist was a little freaked out when they were just riding leisurely along the edge of a farm field from a cemetery at night, maybe taking a shortcut to get home, and saw movement from two different beings that their light wasn’t close enough to illuminate. Or maybe they didn’t see anything until my phone suddenly lit up just down the road from where they were headed. I don’t know–I can’t speak for them. All I know is that I saw something and my brain couldn’t make sense of what it was until it got more information.

And isn’t that just life right now? There’s so much chaos, so many things we’re dealing with that we’ve never had to deal with before, and it’s hard for our brains to make sense of it all, so I think some of us are latching onto ideas that may or may not be true just because at least it’s something to believe in. I guess I’m thinking about this from the perspective of someone who desperately wants to figure out how to overcome the extreme divides in this country right now. Because I have to believe that, deep down, we all want to, and can, be more unified.

I was listening to another podcast the other day–Metaphysical Milkshake with Rainn (Wilson) and Reza (Aslan), where they were interviewing Adam Grant. If you haven’t heard of Adam Grant, go listen to his podcast Work Life, or read his books, or even just follow him on social media. My sister-in-law introduced me to his work when I asked her about the Institutional/Organizational Psychology degree program she’s working on, and he has fascinating ideas and perspectives. On Metaphysical Milkshake, Rainn and Reza tackle “life’s big questions”, and the question they had when talking to Adam Grant was, “What if I’m wrong?” They discussed various things surrounding this topic, including what to do when dealing with people who believe differently than you do, and Adam cited some studies that show that when people spend time with others from a group they see as the enemy, or a group they have prejudice about, the feelings of animosity lessen. A quote that I took with me from Adam Grant in this episode was, “…when you spend time interacting with someone, when you hear their story, when you’re able to empathize with them, all of a sudden you realize there is more to a person than a belief they hold or a group that they belong to.” I need to remember that. Because sometimes it’s so easy to believe that people I disagree with are just rotten inside when I have no idea what may have led them to have the beliefs or behaviors that they now have. And I know that no conflicts were ever solved by believing “the enemy” was evil.

So, going forward I’m going to try to be careful about jumping to conclusions when I’m in the dark and don’t have all the details. I’m not going to assume that aliens are coming for me when it might just be somebody passing through on a bicycle. And I’m not going to assume people are rotten because they believe differently than I do. As hard as it seems, I want to find common ground, build relationships, and try to find ways we can come together to do some good in the world. And to aid me in this, I’m going to read Adam Grant’s latest book, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. I’m probably still going to walk my dog in the dark with no light, though.