The Aging of Perception
As a person gets older a perception that has been generating over the course of a lifetime takes hold and things become far less dynamic over time. As a child a person is constantly in flux and their perception changes at a rapid pace. Events and experiences major and minor can completely change someone’s view on existence and the things going on around them. As someone ages the way that they perceive the events going on around them solidifies and their focus increases but their ability to take in their surroundings from different viewpoints decreases. This is positive for a deeper understanding of the “chosen” perspective but it is detrimental to one’s ability to broaden one’s perception on a person’s environment.
Everyone can remember seminal events from their childhood that changed how they take in the world around them. These events are numerous and many of then caused radical shifts in how we live our lives today. Every single event changes us as we proceed through life but there are only certain things that can really impact the way that we process the information that is constantly flowing into our sensory mechanisms. As we age fewer of these perception changing events occur and we become more set in our ways. Events happen and we use our existing perception mechanisms to process the events. Rather than changing the way external events are processed a person uses the mechanisms already entrenched to perceive the events happening in a familiar way.
I think a example would help flesh out exactly what this means. The same event can happen at different points in life and a person will react to them in very different ways. It is particularly evident when an event happens to a person for the first time versus something that has occurred in the past. For instance, when a person breaks up with a significant other for the first time it can shape how that person approaches every single future relationship. I could always tell when someone I was dating had been cheated on in a early relationship in their life because they were always very jealous and distrustful. They used that early event to form their perception on how people act and applied that to how they perceive every other relationship. This is different when it happens later in life. To take that same example and have it happen later in life after a person has had more relationships under their belt the event becomes more of an exception to the rule, rather than the rule. Instead of having that event occur and changing the perception of future events in a major way, a person can see what happened and process it using what they already know. As we age we are less apt to radically change that view.
This is not to say that one’s perception can’t change later in life, it is just far more likely to have these changes early in life. This is good and bad. The positive is that we gain a deeper understanding to the actions that we do take and our behavior is far more consistent. This leads to predictable more decisions. The problem with this is that if the perception that we adopt has negative impacts on a person they are less and less likely to recognize those negative consequences and change the way that they perceive their environment to eliminate these negative impacts. For example a religious viewpoint that was developed early in life may limit the amount of other ideals that a person will recognize if their chosen viewpoint does not agree with the new information, effectively limiting what that person can experience.
The end game of all of this has to do with understanding the things that have impacted us early in life and trying to disentangle what we are doing from the motives behind why we choose to see things how we do. An honest audit of WHY we are doing the things we do is necessary and healthy. Far too many people do the things they have done simply because that is the way that they have done it in the past rather than making changes that may impact them positively in the long run.
Do you think that you can change the way you perceive what goes on around you or are you set in your ways?
