I’m not fooling you — this is not a cat. This is a picture of a cat. This is just a one-second cut from some cat’s life (or a photoshop masterpiece in a worst case). Given there are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute…we know literally nothing about a cat…Or don’t we?
What was the first thing you have noticed when looking at this cat? Yes, as hard as it is for you to admit it, you felt something. Emotion. This light smile on your face. You were moved by this unknown cat in a glimpse of a second. Diving deep into what have happened requires of you to recall at this instance all your cat related memories…Yes, your smile gets heavier, because you remember a kitten artfully playing in your living room…(Or maybe you don’t, because you had a dog.)
For team kittens, you didn’t see a cat in the picture, but yourself from the past playing with a cat. It doesn’t matter for your subconscious mind that the cat in the picture doesn’t play or even doesn’t move. So how did it happen? Let me explain. Being triggered by a shape resembling what is engraved in your mind as a cat, your mind pulled out your memories of it — including the context in which memories were created. Let’s imagine that there is no couch on the picture, does it change anything? No.
But wait, does it mean that we walk around razor focused on finding what we already know instead of seeing what is? Yes, we do, because the similar equals safe while the different means dangerous. So, literally for most of the time we see ourselves instead what we look at. Picture you looked at is more you than a cat.
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