“Still, a man hears what he wants to hear. And disregards the rest. -–The Boxer (Simon and Garfunkel)
Cover art from Columbia Records
There was a time in the not so distant past when you had very little idea what was going on in someone's head. Occasionally something might pop out of their mouth to make you think, "really?", but most of the time you could go about the day without knowing someone's inner thoughts.
Nowadays, it's not a surprise to hear, read, or be otherwise confronted with the ideas deep inside someone's head. There are times this is funny, like the unicorn story lead in on this "This American Life" podcast:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/293/a-little-bit-of-knowledge
Other times it's less funny, like when I was talking to a business owner in the lobby of his business, and Oprah came on the TV. It triggered him to launch into a weird racist, conspiracy rant that was strangely complete in his head. He looked at me like, "you know." I must have stared back wide-eyed because he kept explaining it to me until I left thinking, "what color is the sky in your world?"
I bring this up because it's a feature of being human. We're not logical creatures, weighing evidence and considering counter-arguments to our arguments. We tend to grab on to a few ideas, draw a conclusion, then stop. As the philosopher Paul Simon in his Simon and Garfunkel days said, "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." So true.
Keep this in mind as we head into the holiday season. A few sips of bourbon tends to loosen the lips and these days who knows what's going to slip out. This is especially true for me. I've been out of circulation a bit, spending a lot of time in my head.
Good stuff.
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