Those flies that crash again and again against the window panes constitute a metaphor, sad but plastic, of the difficulty that human beings have for personal change. Observing them, one tends to think that they do it because they do not see the glass or, what is the same, because there is a real obstacle, not only tangible but very hard, that they do not have the capacity to perceive. It is curious that even with the window open some of them persist in the impossible effort to cross the glass.
Perhaps we should think that perhaps a crystal that we do not see separates us from the achievement of our objectives. And perhaps identifying or defining it will not make it dissolve, but it can surely help us to know why we set ourselves the same objectives over and over again without achieving them, and it can give us clues on how to get to the end of the window, which obviously it’s open.
One of the fundamental causes of the existence of this thick glass is the way that human beings perceive the exterior: despite the fact that we think that we store objective information on which we make informed decisions, the truth is that what our memory contains It serves, above all, the effect of being able to explain to ourselves and to others who we are, that is, to narrate our biography. And the most important thing, logically, is that this explanation makes sense. Therefore often when we look for an explanation for an event we do something surprising, and that is to use the degree of coherence of the explanation as proof of its veracity. In other words, if the way of explaining a certain fact fits with the rest of the ideas that surround it, we quickly infer that this explanation is true, instead of questioning it. Therefore, it is the global meaning that makes us place the pieces in the puzzle of our lives, and not the real verification that things are as we think. Because the brain does not record facts, but builds biographies. That’s why it would be good to question things more instead of taking them for granted. And for this reason we should also think that, when we believe that we are not capable of achieving something, it is very likely that we are listening to a voice that tries to persuade us of it simply because we have never tried it and because it does not fit in it does not make sense. If the creation of meaning is the fundamental objective of our brain, it is very possible that we have to get used to going against it in order to have a broader perspective on our objectives. Maybe that way we will find the open side of the window to be able to change.
The fight for change is to create new meanings, new lives.
Facebook Comments
Disqus