I am moving house again. Unwillingly, for the first time ever. My landlord wants to fix all the leaks and cracks and damp and then live there, so we must once again decamp. For the first time ever, I am forced to relocate, and what was once a joyous leap into the realm of packing and unpacking has become a hellscape of horror.
The relics of our past, once revered and honoured, have become nothing more than bin fodder.
We shall keep our passports, photos and essential documents. Everything else is off to the wily world of trash busters, who shall soon be swanning around our new compound in the finest fashion.
Who even am I? Where has my joy for moving gone? Like all else in life, perspective is key.
Sometimes I feel like every word I think, and write, is an arrow into the darkness of the self, trying, in vain, to make some sense of it. The self, a unique identity that makes us essential beings; is bright, beautiful and brilliant. But not all of us feel this way about ourselves every moment of every day. And that, my friends, is down to perception, the way in which we understand ourselves and others. Although we may like to believe that our perceptions are unsullied, and in some sense, objectively true; inherited traits, mindsets and values are pretty much a lottery. I, for example, am witty, apparently.
People tend to equate that with confidence. But their perception of me has very little to do with how I perceive myself. Self perception is often at odds with that of the world at large.
Any written text is a prime example of the gap between how we feel ourselves to be, on an essential level, and the way others interpret our behaviour.
According to Keith Oatley, Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Toronto, a text is not autonomous. When we read this text, or any text, we mentally rewrite our own version, complete with our own assumptions, perspectives and perceptions of the world and its consequent implications.
This makes sense, we are all different humans, even identical twins can be said to grow up in entirely different families depending on intrinsic personality traits. I know that my three brothers consider me to be an alien, and in fairness, I didn’t witness their births, so who’s to say they weren’t foraged in the cabbage patch or dropped by the stork, despite my parents’ best efforts to scare it away?
Our perceptions are as unique as our fingerprints, and best known only to ourselves, right?
Well…
Self-perception is the awareness of our thoughts, behaviours, words and feelings in relation to the world around us. You might imagine that intimate knowledge of these would belong to the beholder. I mean, who else knows better when I’m feeling tired, or hungry, or entirely bereft of a verbal filter? I am, the one living in my body, after all.
Yet, any parent can tell you that one of their chief functions is to act as sleep enforcer when their child is being a horror but is certainly not tired and will never, ever be….zzzzz (said child passes out). Same goes for hunger; ratty attitudes are best solved with a healthy calorific hug, as every parent comes to understand the hard way.
Even at my advanced age, when one might reasonably expect to have mastered the art of self-awareness, a multitude of triggers and the horses they rode in on are unknown to me on a conscious level.
I might recognise feeling deflated, devalued or defeated after a conversation, but it is only through my feelings that this awareness is manifest.
The reason for this response is beyond my conscious perception.
Daryl Bem first floated the theory of Self Perception in 1967, suggesting that when lacking an initial response or emotion to a particular stimulus, we observe our own reactions and behaviours and use these to divine our position.
For example, I don’t know what I think about AI, but by avoiding it wholeheartedly, I prove that I do not like, nor approve of it.
For many, a visit home to the childhood nest is a prime example of this disconnect in self-awareness; something that is especially prescient right now as a large proportion of Nanjing’s international community try to remember how to pack a suitcase, and when to arrive at check-in, and what is my DOB anyway, for the first time in almost 4 years.
Going home can trigger behaviours or responses that do not manifest in other arenas of our adult lives. For some, it is a sense of safety, comfort, well-being. For others, defences rise, pre-emptive attacks are lined up and pathologies for self-care post the ordeal are already on the back-burner.
When I go to any house in Ireland, I immediately become parched for a cup of tea, which is a good thing, because about 30 seconds after setting foot inside, one is inevitably procured.
Self-perception theory goes even further, to suggest that our behaviours can influence our thoughts and feelings, the sort of Fake it ‘Til You Make It of the Psych world.
In one experiment, Tiffany Ifo had one group of participants look at anonymous photos of men, but they had to do so whilst holding a pencil in their mouths, apparently inducing a smile. (I have tried this, and if I ever smile at you like that, run away. Very fast.) A second group looked at the same photos, sans pencil and creepy smile.
The act of smiling resulted in reduced rates of implicit bias towards Black men in this study. The behaviour changed attitudes.
Ample studies support this hypothesis, not only around reduced biases but also instilling positive responses to previously antagonistic beliefs.
So. Then. We can hack our own brains, you say? All I need to do to live a healthy life in mind and body is to live a healthy life in mind and body? Sounds like a Ponzi scheme, doesn’t it?
But that’s the theory, and it seems to be sound. Behaviours first, understanding of attitudes and beliefs later.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has endorsed this practice for decades; change the behaviour and the beliefs will follow.
Maybe there is some truth in that. My famine-mind mentality has led me to hoard like it was 2019. But every new box that arrives at our new house now inspires the insatiable desire to just bin it. And I have.
My house is still dallying on the obscene in terms of things; vast oceans of things. But there are less things, and every moment I get more confident in my ability to live without the small, medium, large and extra-large cast iron pans.
My perception of need vs. want has undergone such a metamorphosis, I can hardly remember the the mindset that said yes to the abundance of clutter.
Honestly, I never thought I would see the day. And yet, here it is. Goodbye earthly shackles, maybe Diogenes had it right after all.
Soon we will fly, and refresh our perspectives, and miss those closest to our hearts, for they are our family now. Points of view can be shifted, but our passports, our photos, and our core beings remain the same, until they don’t. Life then, is like a game of “Never, Ever Have I Ever” until you do.
Isn’t that liberating?
