On The Park Bench

On an early morning jogging visit to the nearby park, you notice a pair of unkempt men. Unshaven and shabbily dressed, their greasy hair shows signs of fatigue as it sprouts from the sides of hats that have seen better days. One reaches out a half empty can of extra strength lager and gives a smile and a salute to his friend before chugging it back.

First impressions? A pair of drunks, probably homeless. They might even well deserve to be in the state they’re in.

That’s what you see. How about what you don’t see? How about the ‘perhaps?’ Perhaps the two men might have, one time, been a pair of very successful business partners; before some seriously unfortunate event caused their demise which ultimately left them out on the street. Why is the man holding out his beer can to the other and smiling? To celebrate drunkenness? Or perhaps he was he reminiscing a time when they were once very successful and his friend pulled off a big deal.

There’s always more to a story. However, our primary impression is based on our assumptions, experience and knowledge. Sticking to our prior assumptions, experience and knowledge will seriously limit ourselves to seeing only with our eyes and not what is beyond.

I think it is our job as curious human beings to try and find out the whole story before snapping to conclusions. Our duty as innovative human beings is to challenge our own assumptions, experience and knowledge in order to create new knowledge and experience new things.

In our unforgiving societies we are often looking at the ‘obvious’ and condemning people straight away. On the flip side, we are also very quick to put people on a pedestal and fall over their every word out of admiration.

Or sometimes we just need to see what we see with our eyes at face value, and look deeper so that we can see with our minds as well as our eyes. If we challenge ourselves continually there will be no end to the amount of new knowledge we can generate.

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