What you “know“ to be true is a belief that is based on your experience and what you can see.
Even if it’s true, what you see or experience is only a small fraction of what is. It’s like watching a sunset through a keyhole.
What you see may be real and it may be true, but it also may be only a fraction of the picture.
This is our default for how we see everything. We tend to look through the keyhole, even in our own experience.
In any situation it helps to remind yourself of this, before you start down the path of assumptions.
Helpful to ask yourself: what if I’m wrong?
This phenomenon is why decisions don’t always seem to make sense in the moment. When you say “it doesn’t make sense” to do something, what you are saying is that it doesn’t fit logically with what you know to be true — at this time, in this experience, for you.
But you’re looking through a keyhole.
It’s a myopic view that ignores the broader context of the current time and the potential ripple effects: other people who may be impacted by your decision, and the future impact of your decision.
Of course you don’t know the future impact. You don’t even know the present impact of any decision.
You’re looking through a keyhole.
In effect, you’re trying to connect the dots looking forward, but you can’t even see all the dots in the present. And, as Steve Jobs said, you can only connect the dots looking backwards.
If you had a wider lens, you could see more of the picture, and perhaps begin to appreciate that your experience in any situation is a small sliver of the actual experience in that moment. There are factors at play that you don’t even know.
What doesn’t seem to make sense to you may make perfect sense in the larger picture, from the perspective of all time, the universe, God consciousness, nature — the larger forces that shape our experience.
It helps to remember that what you assert to be true is true only for you in your current view of your experience. With greater perspective and a little hubris you may discover that those things are not, in fact, true, or not universally true.
It’s just what you see through your keyhole.
Of course, you’re not required to view life through the keyhole. You can always get a wider lens.
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