Reality

I was at, of all things, a Christian Rock concert last night. It wasn't that the music was bad - it was very good - and it wasn't that the people involved weren't talented; far from it. It isn't even that this applies to anything that was said or done last night¹. It just came to me that people have their very own Reality Filtration Systems (RFS) that sometimes can be seen on a more social scale. A Reality Filtration System is something that is a precondition for the Somebody Else's Problem field that Douglas Adams brought to the fore in his own amusing way:

An S.E.P.,' he said, 'is something that we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. That's what S.E.P. means. Somebody Else's problem. The brain just edits it out; it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye.

-- Douglas Adams

The RFS allows the SEP to exist. Put plainly, people ignore some things and act as if they did not or are not happening - and also, people pay more attention to some things than others. And then there is my personal favorite: RFS as an excuse.

Today I went to get a haircut - a regular thing these days, as my hair grows quickly and I've been spending so much time outside. While awaiting the barber to become free, a man walked in speaking Spanish - a language I can speak.

He asked me, in Spanish, whether this was a place to get a haircut - I responded 'si', and then he asked me how much it cost. The cost is $45 TT, but for some reason my mind drew a blank on translating 45. The answer, of course, is 'cuarenta y cinco' - but in retrospect I noticed I made a mistake in the way I handled the situation.

You see, it became about my ability to say 45 in Spanish. And that really wasn't the problem - the problem was that he didn't know the answer to the cost. The young woman who didn't speak a word of Spanish flashed her fingers to 45 for him, and he got it.

That's how I learned Spanish, actually. So I screwed up - I began addressing my problem instead of the immediate problem that he had. It's the same issue I often complain of in others, and there it was - as plain as day, something that I did. A reminder upon introspection, and a refresher on 45.

The solutions are many. Picking the best one for the situation is important. Reminder noted.