Aphorism project

Aphorism: "Sometimes you can't believe what you see; you have to believe what you feel." p. 61

Morrie, during one of the flashbacks to when Mitch was a student of Morrie's, he recalls this specific class in which Morrie had the students participate in "trust falls". The students stood with their backs to their classmates and tried to fall backwards relaying on the others to catch them. Most of the students were unable to fall backwards and trust that the student would catch them. One girl closed her eyes and fell backward as her partner caught her. Morrie explains that she was able to trust her partner because she closed her eyes. Morrie stated that we cannot always believe what we see but we can believe what we feel. Many of the other students who were looking around the room were unable to trust their partners because of what they saw. Morrie feels that if we ever want others to trust us, we must show that we trust them in return. The trust that is shared between two people can sometimes be risky, but it is a risk we must take if we ever want to be trusted or we ever want to trust others; this risk is to be taken by an instinctive feeling and not by rational thinking as the other students had done who could not complete the fall. (p.61)

Our eyes play tricks on us. In many situations under many guises, our eyes deceive us. For example In Tracy Chevalier's novel, Girl with a Pearl Earring, which I read not long ago, Vermeer (the painter) tells Griet to look at the sky and tell him what colors she sees. Upon further examination she realizes that she sees many colors that are then mixed by her eye to form other colors. A trick. When we see something out of the corner of our eye, our mind tries to identify it, quickly flipping through the known images to find a match. Upon second glance, we realize it is merely a piece of paper or some other object mistaken for something else. Using that premise, you must be careful in believing what you see.

Trusting your gut instinct however, rarely proves us wrong. We are built with an "inherent freeze, flight, or fight response." When we are in a situation that makes us feel uneasy in the bottom of our gut, or makes the hair on the back of our neck stand up, there is a reason. The inner protector is "picking up on subliminal, often times unnoticed things, in order to protect us. "Which then explains the quote, "Sometimes you can't believe what you see; you have to believe what you feel". We have to believe our instincts.

Reading the aphorism, I think I would have to agree with it. Our eyes play tricks on us. Sometimes we can't believe what we see therefore, we have to believe what we feel. Every time someone does the trust fall I also have a hard time trusting my partner . Just like in the book, many of the students had their eyes closed, and in my case I probably would have too. When you take that risk of falling and giving your full trust to your partner, and you finally feel yourself let go you can finally feel the reassurance. You feel the trust you had gave to your person, when they catch you. It becomes real to you, and you come into realization of everything. At least that's how I would perceive it. Throughout the years, I've done some trusting exercises, and I can just relate to the certain event that happened in "Tuesdays with Morrie". 

An aphorism I like to follow by (hopefully it doesn't exist yet) is "At times you just have to be there for yourself"