One of the strangest things about human perception is that the external world often remains exactly the same while our experience of it changes completely. The buildings remain where they have always been. The pathways remain unchanged. The same people continue living beside one another. Yet at some point something shifts and, once it does, it becomes difficult to return to seeing things in quite the same way again.

For many years I largely accepted events at face value. Someone behaved poorly. Someone behaved kindly. A disagreement occurred. A problem emerged. A solution followed. Over time, however, I began noticing something beneath the events themselves. Perhaps it came from age. Perhaps it came from experience. Perhaps it came from spending decades working with people in hospitality, business, training, community groups and later healing work. Whatever the reason, I found myself paying less attention to what people were saying and more attention to what they were actually doing.

In Australia we sometimes call it reading the play. Most of the time there is nothing mysterious about it. A behaviour changes. A standard slips. An issue remains unresolved. The same explanation appears again. Then again. At first it seems insignificant. Eventually the outcome arrives exactly where the pattern suggested it would.

I have watched this happen in families, organisations, workplaces and communities. More recently I have watched it happen within the complex where I live. The decline was not dramatic. Nobody woke up one morning to discover everything had changed. It happened gradually. A concern was raised. An acknowledgement arrived. I was thanked for my concern. Little changed. The same issue remained. The same behaviours continued. The same explanations returned.

After a while I found myself becoming less interested in individual incidents and more interested in the patterns surrounding them. What fascinated me was how quickly people create meaning around events. A neighbour spends more time outside than usual. Someone notices. A story forms. A conclusion follows. No evidence is required because the story itself becomes enough.

Human beings are remarkably talented at filling gaps in information. A door closes. A vehicle arrives unexpectedly. Someone changes a routine. A conversation occurs. Almost immediately interpretation begins. The more I noticed it in others, the more I noticed how often people seemed compelled to create explanations where information was missing.

Living here has made that impossible to ignore. I keep to myself, close my door quietly and generally only look outside when I intend to go out. Yet even the smallest observations can become the starting point for someone else’s interpretation. Door’s slam and slam and slam, and my nervous system adjusts. Someone wonders why a routine changes, and someone invents a reason. The story often arrives long before the facts.

What became more interesting over time was that the same process began turning inward. The more I observed others, the more I noticed my own assumptions, expectations and conclusions. That proved far more valuable than observing anyone else. Difficult environments have a way of exposing things that quieter environments often leave hidden. They reveal how quickly certainty forms, how easily assumptions harden into facts and how readily people defend positions they may never have consciously chosen in the first place.

Once perception changes, it becomes difficult to unsee these things. The world itself does not necessarily become better or worse. It simply becomes more visible. Perhaps that visibility is the real change. Not becoming wiser. Not becoming superior. Simply noticing more than you noticed before. After a while you stop being surprised quite so often. People reveal themselves through repetition. Organisations reveal themselves through repetition. Communities reveal themselves through repetition. Most of us do. The outcome rarely arrives out of nowhere. More often it has been quietly introducing itself for quite some time.

— Saint Parousia