Jane Wharam on......

Is Perception Everything?

  A snake slithered into the office the other day when there were only two of us there.  We watched it disappear into a dark corner behind some boxes and wondered what to do.  My male colleague thought that we might just leave it until everyone came back from lunch but I was aware that one of the girls would be terrified by the thought of it being in the office, so I suggested that we find it and put it back in the grounds, from where it had presumably come.  First of all, while I kept guard, he went and looked it up in case it was an Adder or an exotic, venomous variety, which might have escaped from somewhere.  Having established that it was, in fact, a harmless grass snake, he lifted the boxes and I found a suitable receptacle in which to catch it and then took it out into the gardens and let it loose in the rough ground near the trees, where it slithered off at great speed and hopefully found a similarly dark but much snake-friendlier environment in which to nap.

 When everyone else got back, they were amazed at what had happened and what we had done, particularly my part in the matter as, being a woman, I was presumed to be sacred of snakes.  The thing is, I’m not; I quite like them, actually, although I wouldn’t go near a poisonous one, as I’m not stupid!  Constrictors, though, are lovely and their skin feels nothing like what I imagined before I held one – it’s cool, dry and very strokeable in fact.  I wouldn’t keep one as a pet but they hold no terrors for me and that’s the point of this; I didn’t do anything brave in removing the snake.  I did it because I knew that its presence would upset a friend and because I could do it without upsetting myself.  It boils down to perception.  My action was perceived as brave but it wasn’t.

 I always remember reading the marketing guru, Tom Peters, saying that ‘perception is everything’.  That quote struck me at the time as being quite cynical.  After all, where does truth lie in that statement?  If we believe the perception, it must be easy to hide the truth behind it.  However, the older I got and the more I experienced of life, I came to realise that  he was absolutely right.  Many people capitalise on others’ perceptions of them rather than showing their true identity.  I could have capitalised on the snake story and been toasted forever more as the fearless woman of the office but that wouldn’t have been the truth.  I may have been kind but I wasn’t brave.

 And that’s why reputation is so important.  If someone gets the reputation of being honest, for example, whatever they say will be treated as the truth.  And that’s a good thing, as long as they’re not hiding lies behind their reputation.   Similarly, we’ve all heard the expression, ‘give a dog a bad name and hang him’.  Whatever the perceived liar says, she will never be believed, even if she has changed her ways.  Which is why, while I agree with Tom that that’s how most people live, I prefer to judge for myself in every situation and not base my reaction on the general perception.  If my emperor walks past naked, I want to be able to see his lack of clothes.

 

Going Back To My Roots

  Last night I went to a College reunion, the first one in thirty years, and met people I haven’t clapped eyes on since 1979 and renewed acquaintanceships with friends I’ve lost touch with over the years.  The thing which most surprised me most though was that I didn’t just see a sad bunch of 50 somethings prancing around to ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’; instead, I saw a bunch of people having fun, who reminded me of when I was 18, several of whom still touched my heart.

So what is it about people from our formative years, which still has the power to move us?  I’d like to think that it’s about the essence of a person, which hopefully doesn’t change with the passage of time.  OK, our bodies start to give up – at one point we were playing the ‘guess the number of hip replacements in the room’ game! – but our souls are immutable and embody our core traits – kindness, generosity, curiosity, intelligence, humour or loyalty.  These traits make up the facets of our personality, which we have from birth, and they are then polished and honed over the years or buried and forgotten.  But they never go away.  In some people they are buried so successfully that newer acquaintances don’t even know they exist and in others, traits which aren’t very developed in youth start to shine as they get older.

 Funnily enough, I had been going to blog under this very title earlier in the week, but that was going to be all about going back to my academic roots.  I now find myself working very much as I did as an undergraduate; I research and write all day and quite often party at night (second adolescence, obviously!).  I was going to say that I’m reverting to my original hopes and dreams from my teenage years as I approach my Autumn.  But, of course, it’s so much more than that. 

 Where I went wrong all those years ago, if ‘wrong’ is the right word, and I’m not sure that it is, is that, having achieved my first goal of going to university – at a time when only 2% of the population did -  I started to lack balance and, more importantly, I started to lose my inner purpose and concentrated too hard on what felt right at the time – or, more accurately, what I wanted at the time, even if I knew that what I wanted wasn’t what I should have.  I certainly started to lose my self-discipline and that has taken over twenty years to get back.  Without going into detail, I made several bad choices back then, based on the gratification of the moment, and started to lose my way and my self.

 However, those traits never disappear and, having spent the last several years scraping the layers off, I now feel as though some of the better facets of my personality are starting to appear and develop again.  The organisers of the reunion  (who did a fantastic job, by the way) had made up badges for the attendees, which we wore around our necks like labels.  The badge consists of a picture of the person from their College years, their name at the time and what they studied.  I now have mine hanging next to my desk and the next time I feel unsure about which direction to take, I’m going to look at that girl and remember what she would do instinctively and weigh that up with the experience the woman I am now has acquired.  I’m going to go back to my roots.