Why do people see the same situation so differently?

Imagine a family dinner. Your brother’s hardly said a word all evening. On the way home you say, “He was in a right mood.” Your sister says, “Really? I thought he looked exhausted.”

Same man. Same silence. Try it from each side of the table.

You’re not simply interpreting the same behaviour differently. You have different things at stake. When you say “He was rude,” you might also be saying, “I felt rejected.” When she says “He was exhausted,” she might be saying, “Give him a break.”

Uexküll was a biologist with a philosopher’s nose for a question, and his favourite example was the tick. To us, a forest is full of trees, birds, colours, sounds and smells. The tick lives in the same forest, but almost none of that reaches it.

Uexküll called this an Umwelt: the world that’s meaningful to a creature, shaped by what its body can sense and what it needs. Every organism, he thought, brings forth a world that matters to it. The idea went on to shape Scheler, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze, and it quietly undermined the old picture of animals as little biological machines.

Humans obviously aren’t ticks. Although I’ve met a few people who come close. But we don’t encounter everything that’s happening around us either. Some things stand out. Others barely register.

Your world shifts with your state, not just your beliefs. Move the slider.

The invitation hasn’t changed. What you notice, and how it appears to you, has. When you’re well, you can tolerate uncertainty, stay curious and see alternatives. As energy falls, perception narrows, and the world starts to look more threatening, more rigid and more black and white.

Here’s where I think this becomes really useful. Before arguing about who’s right, it helps to pull apart three things that usually arrive tangled together.

Of course, we could always ask him. Perhaps he really was being rude. Perhaps he was exhausted. Maybe both. Understanding somebody’s circumstances doesn’t mean excusing their behaviour.

And the fact that we experience things differently doesn’t mean all interpretations are equally good. Some fit what happened better than others. But it does mean we might want to be a little more curious before becoming certain.