Maybe you've done this. Close one eye and, keeping it closed, walk through the space you're in, reach for a doorknob, pour a glass of water from a pitcher.
Welcome to my world. I was born with a visual impairment. My two eyes don't coordinate to see things. I see out of both eyes, but they don't converge to bring both images together which allows for the perception of depth. I actually don't know what that is because I haven't experienced it, but I know if I throw a baseball to most of you, even if it comes in fast and hard, you'll do this thing of deftly capturing it, decelerating it, and holding it.
Throw a baseball fast and hard at me, and I'll get hurt. There was a time when I might have been offended enough by your throwing something at me, that I might have thrown a punch, but that would have missed.
Those experiences allow me to understand that even though I can perceive things as closer or farther away, much as you can view the flat surface of a landscape painting and understand foreground and background, I came to understand sometime in middle school that my experience is not the same. Then, as now, I mostly use my right eye for distance, and my left eye for reading and other close work. Please don't toss me the car keys.
Last week, I wrote about another important cognitive difference, our differing perceptions of time.
My cognitive difference with depth perception has a visibility to it. One can see my eyes don't track together. This helps people understand my clumsiness as inherent and not carelessness. This allowed for a measure of compassion consistent with that time and place: "The kid's cockeyed. Leave him alone."
Our different perceptions of time are less visible, but no less profound.
Which experience is more like you? When we ask people a question like, "How long is your daily commute?" We get answers ranging from, "29 minutes today and 28 minutes yesterday." to, "I don't know. About a half an hour?"
Those of us with a strong connection to our Sequential process, where our temporal clock resides, give responses like the first. Those with stronger connections to the Associative process, which holds us in the present moment, give responses like the second.
This shows up in our lives in other contradictory ways. Those with an Associative preference tend to slide into a ten o'clock meeting after racing the clock from third base. Those with a Sequential preference were settled in at least five minutes before. Sometimes either can be true for those of you with dual access to the Associative and Sequential.
Our different time awareness can show up at the end of the meeting also. When an important issue shows up five minutes before the scheduled end, the Time-as-event leader may make the decision to extend the meeting because the issue that has an important context may feel more important than whatever people have to do next. People who have a strong attachment to timeliness may be stewing with resentment at being delayed.
Conversely, the Time-as-boundary leader may cut off the discussion and table it for a later meeting. This may feel obtuse to those present in the moment who are thinking, "it's important; it came up; and we're all here."
This is a hard one for all of us. We have to fight our human condition to think the person who experiences time differently than we do is either less intelligent, moral, or careful than you are.
And, yes, you do. I've heard you mutter under your breath.
As with all things active from our deep cognitive processes, we manage them best when we bring them to consciousness.
If someone runs consistently late, ask why you care? Does it really make a difference? I have clients who are consistently late. Not just for them -- the world doesn't doesn't run on time either --I have small interruptible tasks at the ready. Often people being late is the only way I get these things accomplished.
And if it matters, I heard a story of a surgeon who was consistently late to the operating room. That needed to be addressed -- with candor.
That thing that seems urgent at the end of the meeting? Take a pause and poll the room. What do you have next? How comfortable are you staying late? What are your hard stops coming up? How soon could you reschedule so we could devote our attention exclusively to this issue?
Those differences are real and won't go away. Bringing them to consciousness makes them visible. What we can all see, we can potentially negotiate.
Warm regards,
Francis Sopper
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