Here's a situation:
Eight people are standing in front of a bus stop, casually waiting.
A red car zooms past. Four of the eight people saw it. Two of the others were intently looking down at their cellular phones and one of them was focused on his infant child.
The four who saw it stand watching as it speeds away. A woman casually states, "Nice car. '98 Mustang GT, like my father's when I was a kid."
A man whispers to another man, "Did you see the tits on that blonde?"
The other man suddenly yanks out his cell phone and dials a number. "Yes, I have a report of a missing child."
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There's an explanation as to how these behaviors are linked into the final statement. Given the brief event at the bus stop, we may deduce any number of possibilities. But there is one truth, regardless of what we've deduced. The truth is as follows:
Four people in total each saw a red car. Some would say they "saw" the same thing.
But as we've witnessed, not every person was focused on the same thing.
The first person to speak happened to be a woman. She also happened to be a mechanic. In fact, she's worked on cars for years and years, and she could probably pinpoint the make and model of various vehicles even at a distance. She's experienced in that field, and she was focused on the type of vehicle as it flew past, especially since it reminded her of her father's vehicle when she was younger.
The second person to speak was an alpha-male sort of guy, a guy whose blood warms whenever a woman walks past. There's a reason for that as well, but for our purposes, it's simply unimportant. He was focused on the driver, noticing her flowing hair right away. His attentions were brought elsewhere shortly after, to the size of her breasts. He felt the need to assert his gusto, and so he felt comfortable whispering to a stranger, "Did you see the tits on that blonde?"
The last person to speak in the situation happened to be reading something earlier in the day on the internet about a missing child, blue eyes, brown hair, last seen two weeks prior--left in a red mustang by a careless parent as he went into the drug store, license plate: JIZZY X. He had forgotten almost all of the information as soon as he read it, but he remembered that they said a woman was last seen in the vehicle, most likely the suspect that had stolen the vehicle. The man remembered that detail because he simply didn't expect to read that the potential perpetrator would be a female.
As the car sped past, the man noticed only that the car was red, and he saw the X at the end of the license plate, thinking nothing of it.
When the woman said it was a '98 Mustang GT, he vaguely recalled the information he had read earlier. When the other man whispered about the driver being female, the man glanced at the license plate and saw the J in front. At that point, he made an estimated guess and swiped out his phone, calling emergency and letting them know that he believed he had seen what fit the profile.
It could be that it's all coincidence.
Four people saw a red car.
Each of them observed something different. And even then, the other three probably had no idea why the person who called emergency actually called.
This is a phenomenon that happens in life... countless times. We simply see what we see, but what we're focused on might add up to something greater. It's always a good idea to understand, and realize, that we may not know everything, even when we know that we all saw the same red car. Someone else may have noticed something else.
Admitting our biases can open a pathway to knowledge, while unearned arrogance may ensure the doors to improvement remained locked.
