Purple Rain #6

On Sunday evening, after taking a small break from homework, I quickly checked the game to see the newest TKO. Be inspired by a photograph? I'm an engineer goddamnit; I'm artisically retarded. As a thought through what I was going to do, I noticed something. Or, to be more concrete, I noticed what I did not know. There is an object just to the left of the rightmost windowsill that I have no idea what it is. Is is a duffel bag, a trick of the light, or something else? I decided upon duffel bag, seeing what I considered to be straps and a handle and went back to my studies. Perhaps the misplaced duffel had some meaning. Two days later, I cam back to the computer to write my post (trying to not put it off to the last minute) and looked at the picture again. A duffel? What was I thinking? Of course at this time, I had not clue what it was. Today, I realized that I had fallen into a trap that many themselves fall into.

When faced with something we don't know, we often guess. And once we guess, we distort what we percieve to support our unwarrented guess. I concinvced my self that straps existed when clearly they did not, all because of my early conclusion that the object was a bag of some sort.

The main source of this problem stems from our paradigms. We set a way of looking at the world to help us make decisions, but sometimes the facts of the world don't really mesh well with our paradigms. So we subconsciously twist what we percieve to fit our mold. For example, one of the more common paradigms that people have is the "I'm perfect!" paradigm. We all know someone who believes they're perfect, and if something is wrong, it's always somebody else's fault. Heck some of have even dated these kind of people... *meekly raises hand* When something goes wrong, it is not immediatly apparent who is at fault, but the egotistical immediatly makes conclusions that it can't be their fault and must be someone else's. Paradigms can go both ways though, as those with low self-esteem often are blaming themselves for things that aren't their fault, working under the paradigm that they are worthless and can't do anything right. Somehow, I've managed to date both extremes.

So how can we solve this problem inherent within ourselves? Simple. Learn to tolerate the unknown. Many times we like to guess or make explanations without sufficient evidence because, let's face it, many times we don't want to say "I don't know." But for some situations, we have to get outside our basic nature and be comfortable with the fact that we don't know, instead of letting our preconcieved notions dictate what that unknown is. Don't find duffel bags that don't exist.

So what the heck is that object to the right of the windowsill? I don't know, and I'm not afraid to admit it.