I See

My Toastmasters Speech – Project 2

I See

Seen people with spectacles? –

Fancy frames thick / thin lenses.

Well, there are so many like this in this room, even I am wearing my secondary eyes. You must be thinking simply how silly the question was!

Never mind, we all know an optician makes these spectacles, based on test results either done by himself or a qualified eye doctor, in medical terms an optometrist. The idea is to make the person wearing these see with clarity, taking away any lack of appropriate focussedness.

Ladies and gentlemen, greetings for the day, I hope, I wish you all, be in best of your health (coz somehow I am not) , in best of your spirits and on the top having best of your vision.

My question to you is, do we need just clarity of vision?  I consulted my doctor 6 months back and got my numbers corrected. But will these pair of glasses ensure that I will see things correctly, if my mind is filled with prejudice and close mindedness. Will I be able to keep up with the pace with so many intellectual people around, even if I choose to keep a narrow outlook?

The answer is an obvious- NO. This restrictedness of not one’s eye sight but one’s vision distorts ones perception and brings in a refractive error.  

We are all the prisoners of our own perceptions. I have a short story about the results of being locked up behind the bars of worry, doubt and fear or better to say a chained mind of its own perception.

I walked around the counter at Mc Donald’s to get a straw for my drink and found a woman frantically mopping up her spilled coffee. She was using the flimsy tissue paper that was used for wrapping burger so the mopping up process wasn’t working well. I reached for the napkins and started helping her. She looked up in surprise that I had found the napkins saying that she had looked for them but didn’t see them. Her comment was “I couldn’t see.”

She was right. She couldn’t see Why not? Because of her present state of mind, she might have panicked or been in a hurry, and this blocked her vision. She was not able to see the napkins that were kept in plain sight. It was a state of mind of “worry, rush, and fear.”
In the prison of our own perceptions, we can’t see for what we are looking, fear motivates our actions. Each of us has our own personal prison created out of all that we have been taught and accepted about the worldview. Perception does rule!

For example if someone inquires what time it is. My hands rush to my mobile phone. I don’t care that I am wearing a nice watch.

Let’s have another example how many time have you searched for your glasses and found it at place least expected, your head.

 Or what do you think is the reason behind biased political views and favoritism. Many times our upbringing, our thought patterns rule our decision making and views. We behave as if we are not able to see. As a matter of fact, we do not, if our mind is blocked with obstacles.  Many a times, the uniqueness of the system in which we are caught, forces us to see erroneously. Our unsymmetrical upbringing, different backgrounds, may prohibit us from seeing clearly. In the struggle between reality and perception, most of the times, it is the latter that emerges paramount.

Folks,  “Our Perception magnifies things that we believe in”

 Let’s all break out of prison now!

I am a Business Analyst my job is to first ask questions, get the answers and then start working on them.

I have one more question to you. Look at the below picture.

These are two horizontal lines.

Horizontal lines

Which one is longer?

Many of you may find the above one longer. But, you will be surprised to know that, both are equivalent in length.

My perception says, the first denotes the open mind when you are able to see broad horizons and the second, a closed, restricted, narrow mind. So in the end, I am repeating myself, Perception Rules!

Lastly I would get a smile, when someone from the audience says, “I see”, as an acknowledgement of my speech. It’s a relief that we all share same perception J

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