Keine Sicht ist objektiv, jeder Ast hängt etwas schief. (unbekannt)

There is nothing like an objective world out there.

Think about time. We all know that feeling that time can run in many different ways. When we like something, we usually have the impression that it runs too fast. And the opposite, when we are waiting for something or we have to do something we don’t like, time will never come to an end.

I think the same happens for the idea of distance. When I was living in Hamburg which is a pretty big town, in a certain sense self sufficient, you can get basically everything you need. As a result, there is no need to go somewhere else, unless you want to do so. And, you won’t do it often. When many years later I moved to a small town in Schleswig- Holstein, at the beginning I often felt the need to go to Hamburg. I just went, and it was like taking the bus to the next suburbs. Asking me where I live, people from Hamburg were surprised that one could actually live in a place like that. It takes one hour and 20 minutes, so you can even go for a movie or a coffee or something like that. What I am saying is that people from Hamburg felt this distance in a completely different way than I did. For both of us, it is just 100 km, to be precise, but the distance in mind is a totally different one. In their mind almost unsurmountable, in my mind something you just do.

Speaking about time and place, there is another thing I am wondering about for quite a while. When you have been away for a while living in another place, you might assume that things are different there because it is a different place. But then, when returning home, you might discover that the same things there are now changed as well. So, what is the changing factor, time or place?

Perception is subjective. Of course, there is an objective world out, but … not for us. What we perceive has already gone through our lenses. We are not able to perceive the world as it is. We perceive the world according to our capacities, and that means our experiences which shape the way how we will make new experiences, but also to our physical capacities, e.g. our eyes see different aspects than – let’ say – the eyes of a dog or even the ones of a bird (e.g. the colour spectrum). Many of our actions and reactions are automatic, for example when walking we don’t think about every single movement we make, we just walk and – it works. So many things of this world don’t even pass at our – at least conscious – perception.

So, how can we really tell that the world is as we perceive it? Probably everybody of us has made the experience of two people apparently talking about the same thing or situation, but they can’t agree about what they have seen or what has happened. And probably both might feel that the other one is wrong. But is it really about being right and wrong? Won’t it be better to say that the other simply has another way of perceiving the same thing? That would mean that we can’t be sure that the other will see the world around us in the same way as we do. Unluckily, that is very likely the case.

On top of that language plays a crucial role. Even if we might talk about the same thing we might choose different words to name it. That adds a different meaning to the things.