Monthly Archives: April 2025

Perceptions and misperceptions

I remember when I was in Grade 9, in a Grade 7-9 Junior High, and I was 4’11”. I was the second shortest Grade 9 and the shortest guy was very popular. I thought about my height a fair bit back then and it bugged me a lot. My perception was that I was tiny and that I’d never grow. The only time I was physically bullied was being put in a locker for all of about 5-10 seconds, and I honestly don’t even remember who did it… but I got a lot of comments about my size and they weren’t always nice. It didn’t help that I was nerdy and only had a small group of friends, but they were good friends and they looked out for me. The reality is that my (lack of) height didn’t really hinder me much, other than in sports, and yet I let my height bug me quite a bit, because I could see everyone growing and I just stayed the same.

Little did I know that I would grow 7-and-a-half inches in the next school year. My mom had to buy me new pants 3 times in that year because it just wasn’t cool wearing floods (pants that didn’t at least reach your ankles).

Today I have a false sense of my height. I’m a little shy of 5’10’ because I’ve shrunk a bit in the last decade, but I often think of myself as taller. I am often surprised when I get close to someone and I realize that I’m 2-3 inches shorter than them… My first impression being that I’m the same height as them. I don’t know if this misperception is related to confidence or something else, but that’s the way I see myself.

I remember playing basketball against a colleague that I’d worked with for a few years. I went to check him and realized he was a lot taller than me. I literally asked him when he grew, because for years I considered us the same height and he’s 6’1. It seems weird to me that I would have this perception of my own hight considering where I came from in Grade 9.

I wonder what other misperceptions I carry with me that I’m not as aware of as this one? What are the things that I think about in ways that help or hinder me as I move about the world? Do I sell myself short in ways that do not serve me well? Do I walk around obliviously confident in other ways that help me navigate things better than I should?

Have you ever had a friend tell you that you needed to work on something that you thought you were good at? Or have you had them compliment you on something you thought you weren’t good at? I think that’s one of the strengths of a good friend, that they don’t see you with the same misperceptions that you see yourself. Because it’s really hard to see your on misperceptions… if you could see them, they would just be perceptions.

Dire consequences

The inability to process the consequences of your thoughts, words and action is a good definition for stupidity. The thing about stupidity is that even intelligent people can perform acts of stupidity. But repeatedly doing stupid things suggests a lack of intelligence.

I watched a video yesterday of people doing stupid things and getting hurt. One example was a guy standing on someone’s shoulders on a diving board and trying to dive, but slipping while pushing off and landing face first on the diving board. I don’t know if alcohol was part of the decision making, and I don’t know how smart that person might be, but this is a good display of stupidity with dire consequences.

If I said that there’s currently a display of stupidity on a global scale by a political administration, you would automatically know exactly which administration I’m talking about. The difference between the stupidity of the guy on the diving board versus this administration I mention is the scope of the consequences. The diving board guy was the sole sufferer of his stupidity.

I honestly feel like when I am listening to the words and watching the actions of this administration, I am watching a blooper reel of accidents. I’m watching a repeated display of stupidity with dire consequences, and yet the bloopers keep coming: Insulting and even threatening allies, slashing support programs, dissolving institutions, and making economic blunders, all of which are alienating not only global friends, but dividing their nation, and harming their citizens.

This blooper reel isn’t going to be fixed with stitches on a forehead, needed because of an impact with a diving board. The suffering for this stupidity won’t be felt by a single person. This is going to hurt a lot of people, and it’s going to take a long time to recover. The question is, when will the stupidity stop?

I don’t think the guy on the diving board is going to try to repeat that stunt. The question is if he’ll do something equally stupid again… it’s the repeated behaviour that truly moves someone from making a stupid choice to actually just being stupid.