Life Is a Game of Incomplete Information
For the most part, we rarely consider how limited each of our individual perspectives are.
Why? Awareness of this information has enormous potential for improving our lives.
I. Context
You’re living a life where every moment has you at the very center. This is problematic because you aren’t the center of the universe. There are plenty of other things going on at any given moment.
Every single interaction you’ve ever had with another person(s) is accompanied by at least one other perspective – the perspective of the other person(s). This is true of every single shared experience you have ever had throughout your entire life.
II. The Obstacle
There is quite simply way too much information out there for you to handle and process it all. So you don’t.
I remember a brilliant passage by Michael Pollan (author of The Botany of Desire & How To Change Your Mind — both of which I highly recommend) on how the brain filters out enormous amounts of information at any given moment so as to keep you sane.
Were you thinking of the texture of whatever you’re sitting on right now? Probably not (until now). How about what your socks feel like? The back of your neck? The conversation happening 15 feet to your left? The plane that just passed overhead?
If you can’t even handle all of the information coming at you, how could you possibly consider all of the other stuff going on outside of your immediate little bubble in the universe?
You get my point (by the way, you only start to truly notice how many planes there are in the sky when you’re shooting a documentary outside and have to wait for quiet every 12 minutes).
My point: you’re a little piece in a very big puzzle. How exactly is that beneficial information to keep in mind?
III. Takeaways
1) Humility: A reminder that you are human (can never get enough of those).
2) Resilience: I believe seeing the world this way can train us to more quickly accept and adapt when things do not going according “to plan”.
3) Prioritization: You have built-in limits in terms of memory, ability to absorb and process information, etc. You can’t know everything that’s going on but you can make an effort to curate what you consume, what you pay attention to, and what you learn about.
Bonus
→ 3 simple ideas that are changing my life
→ The Miraculous Improbability of Your Entire Existence (I’m very proud of how this piece came out, on how lucky in a strange way, we are to be alive)
→ One of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard
→ “Iceland: An Audiovisual Experience” is a short piece that I edited and sound designed (from scratch, the drone footage has no sound) in 2018. It was a Vimeo Staff Pick. If you’re looking for a 2 minute break from reality, consider checking it out.
Thanks for reading!
Nathaniel Drew
