The Lens We Were Taught to Look Through

We're born into a world that already has definitions waiting for us. We're taught how we're supposed to behave, what success looks like, what we're supposed to learn, what a "good" person does, what work is supposed to look like, what's realistic, what's possible, and what isn't. We learn these things so early and so consistently that eventually we don't experience them as teachings anymore. We experience them as reality.

And that's what has been fascinating me.

I don't think the school system is inherently bad. In fact, there are things I genuinely value about having gone through it. I learned how to read, and because I learned how to read, I gained access to books. Those books have introduced me to ideas that completely expanded the way I see existence. So how could I say the entire system was useless? It wasn't. It gave me tools.

But maybe there's a difference between being given tools and being taught a framework for how to use those tools—and then eventually forgetting that it's a framework at all.

School taught me how to read the map. But the map isn't the territory.

And maybe that's true of much more than school.

We're constantly being given lenses through which to experience life. Science gives us certain lenses. Religion gives us certain lenses. Culture gives us certain lenses. Family gives us certain lenses. Our experiences give us lenses. We're even taught to experience the world through words and concepts. We learn a word, attach meaning to it, and then begin experiencing the thing through the meaning we've been given. But the word isn't the thing itself. The concept isn't the experience. It's another lens.

The interesting part is that because we've spent so much of our lives looking through these lenses, we can forget that we're looking through anything at all. We just call it reality.

But what if it's simply one way of interpreting reality?

Not necessarily wrong. Not necessarily right. Just one lens.

That thought creates a lot of space for me. Because suddenly, something being unfamiliar doesn't automatically make it wrong. Something being unconventional doesn't automatically make it crazy. Something being outside the framework doesn't automatically mean it doesn't exist. It might simply mean we don't currently have a widely accepted lens for understanding it.

And this is where authenticity becomes interesting.

We're constantly told to "be yourself," but how do you know who yourself is when you've spent your entire life being taught what a person is supposed to be? What if some of the things we call personality are actually adaptations? What if some of the things we call limitations are simply beliefs we've rehearsed for so long that they became familiar? What if some of the things we call "normal" are just deeply practiced?

I'm not interested in throwing away every framework I've been given. Some of these frameworks are incredibly useful. I want to know how to use them without mistaking them for the whole. I want to be able to read the map and still remember that there is a landscape beyond it. I want to understand the commonly accepted way of seeing something without assuming that commonly accepted means completely understood.

Because maybe there isn't one correct way to experience reality.

There are so many perspectives, so many ways of perceiving, so many different experiences happening simultaneously. One perspective can reveal something another perspective can't. One person can experience something completely differently from another person and neither experience necessarily has to cancel the other one out.

Maybe reality is simply much larger than any one perspective could contain.

And honestly, whatever the fuck this is—God, consciousness, existence, whatever word we want to use—I don't know that I need to define it. Maybe I don't need to know exactly what it is or why any of this is happening to recognize that there is probably far more to existence than the small portion we've collectively agreed upon.

Maybe that's part of what expansion actually is.

Not finding one new lens and declaring, "This is the truth."

But becoming aware enough to realize there are lenses at all.

To explore. To question. To experience. To remain curious. To keep what serves and release what doesn't. To allow reality to be larger than the explanation currently available for it.

Because maybe existence isn't asking us to find the one correct way to experience it.

Maybe we're here to experience.