In the following days, I spent hours mulling over all the things that I could have done differently to avoid the accident.  I could have paid more attention to the road instead of the linguistics paper that was due the next day.  I could have driven more slowly, used my mirrors more often, or changed lanes earlier. Even something as seemingly trivial as leaving the house a minute later would have almost certainly lead to a smooth ride.  If only I would have grabbed a snack before leaving, or answered the phone, or had trouble finding a shoe. Maybe if I spent an extra second searching for a good song on the radio, or putting on my seatbelt, or backing out of the driveway all of it could have been avoided.  Thinking about these endless scenarios in which everything would have been different caused me to feel anxious, frustrated and guilty.

Finally, amid my endless “if only” fantasies, I had an appeasing thought:  if I mourn for and blame myself over all the things I could have done to avoid negative situations, then it is only rational that I should also be grateful for and laud myself for all the things I did do in positive situations. What about all the times I hit the breaks in time to avoid a reckless driver?  What about all the times where leaving the house a minute later would have put me in a situation where an even worse car accident was unavoidable?  I quickly realized that the amount and quality of my negative “if only” thoughts paled in comparison to the infinite positive ones that I rarely explicitly recognized.

It became a game.  What if my parents enrolled me in a different high school (where I would have made different friends)?  What if I didn’t let my friends convince me to go out the night I met my girlfriend?  What if I stuck with my English major instead of switching to psychology?  What would have happened if, before all those instances where I found myself “in the right place at the right time”, I grabbed a snack before leaving, or answered the phone, or had trouble finding a shoe?  It soon became clear to me that, even if I was going to build true emotion upon an imagined foundation, I would have to give equal time to both my shortcomings and my virtues.  This is a principle that I often turn to in my life, and one that I believe can be extremely helpful in building optimism, self-confidence and resilience.

As an ardent candy addict, I offer a metaphor:  If you are going to blame your right hand for dropping a single candy on its way to your mouth, then you also must commend your left hand for gripping the bag tightly enough to retain the many others.

No one, of course, is wholly guided by perception. Our rational minds are constantly evaluating and revising our perceptions in an effort to more closely approximate the “real” – the true meaning of an utterance, gesture or incident. Often, to be sure, our perceptions are dead on, such as when the intent of an ambiguous gesture is accurately discerned (e.g. a friendly hug is recognized for what it is and not misconstrued as romantic). Other times, contrarily, our perceptions lead us astray, obscuring the reality of a situation with a host of ideas that can result in needless negative emotional experiences (or, sometimes, risky positive ones).

These are hardly new concepts, and they are taken into account by the majority of people at least to some extent in their daily lives. We recognize, for instance, that motivations are often hidden and that we must use the information available to us in order to form as accurate a perception as possible. What we often fail to take into account, however, is that perception in interpersonal interaction is a dynamic process that involves a thinking, interpreting and evaluating mind other than our own. In other words, when we attempt to get at the “true” meaning of another individual’s actions, we may forget that that person’s actions are themselves based on interpretation. Thus, where we seek truth we find only more subjective perception.

Taking a fresh perspective, as is often preached through the adage “walking in someone else’s shoes”, is in my opinion one of the most important steps towards empathizing with and understanding others. By recognizing that our ways of interpreting the world are complimented by infinite variations, we can begin to understand true motivation; that is, the motivation behind motivation. The reasons why some react with anger when we would have reacted with kindness, or how someone’s opinion can be so drastically different from our own, for instance, become more available as we realize that the same forces acting upon our perspectives are acting upon others in varying degrees and combinations.

Asking the question “what might I have done in a situation” will provide some important insight into others’ behaviour and help you to understand their motivations. It is equally important, however, to wonder how others’ unique perspectives lay the foundations for the way they feel, think and act.  Teaching children (and recognizing ourselves) that others respond to their own perspectives, no matter how off track they appear to be, with the same conviction that we respond to ours, will undoubtedly help to foster social intelligence, self-awareness and empathy.