There's No Reality, Only Perceptions

It has occurred to me lately just how the filters through which we see and read events determine how we evaluate and react to them. The phrase, "You look at the world through rose-colored glasses" is an axiom that is truer than I've ever suspected. I began seeing how people really do wear different glasses through which they see and react to things when I began writing in earnest. Sometimes this is good, I suppose, if you have on a really good pair of glasses that filter things correctly.

If you are wearing a filtering pair of glasses that prompt you to react rationally to things, this is good. If you are wearing a pair that prompts you to determine everything that happens to you as a personal attack, this is bad.

When I wrote in college, someone had to really be riled to sit down and bother to write a letter to the editor and send it in. Today, with email available to all, it is too easy to react first and think later. Also, in today's world some think it appropriate to kill you when you express something in your prose they don't like. Check out the story about how Chauncey Bailey was killed for writing his opinions.

A fine publication for those contemplating moving overseas and starting life anew is Escape Artist. I've published several pieces for them in the past. Three more will appear over the next three months. The piece, Want to be an Expat or a Fakepat? appeared in a recent issue and has prompted readers' responses that nicely demonstrate that reality tends to be, more often than not, more about our perceptions than about objective truth.

My story, Want to be an Expat or a Fakepat, brought in several emailed responses:

1.) I am a Canadian expat living in Culiacán, Sinaloa. My wife and son are natural Mexicans. I read your article about fakepats in the Escape from America Magazine. I totally agree your comments on the ignorant nature of many of the foreigners (us Canadians included) who come here expecting to find a Fantasy Island welcoming party. I don’t want to infer that adapting to life here is easy or should be; a really humble effort has to be made to assimilate into Mexico’s enduring culture.

2.) LOVED your expat/fakepat article! As a woman living in the Southwest who has visions of living in Mexico dancing in her head, this was more great info to consider. Thanks again for the great article. I've seen many Americans in this category (unfortunately), not just in Mexico, but other places as well. My thoughts are if you want to live in another country, you adjust to that country, it doesn't have to adjust to you.

The third response meant the most since it came from a Hispanic cultural analyst who said this:

3.) I just read your article on living in Mexico titled expat or fakepat. I applaud you. This is the kind of advice I have been writing to authors who I think have given a less than accurate account of living in Mexico. I have spent my entire career launching fortune 100 companies through out Latin America this is the first time I have read something which was unvarnished and straightforward about living in Latin America. --Suerte, Juan-Manuel

Then, in contrast, I received an email from someone identifying himself as Hispanic and who expressed total outrage. He was incensed at what I had to say in the article.

How do you account for this? Perception tends to be everything. I receive favorable reviews, then comes the one who takes a look at my prose with a different set of filters in his glasses and has a melt down.

Book authors get this too.

My favorite travel writer, Bill Bryson, on his book Neither Here Nor There, got pelted with everything from accusations of "xenophobia" to "poor writing" and "where's the editor?" comments from readers on Amazon.com. I've read the book countless times and I am left wondering, " Just what book did these people read?" It couldn't have been the same one—those perceptions!

My two books, The Plain Truth About Living in Mexico, and Guanajuato, Mexico, both projects being relocation guides and dealing with expatriation issues, were characterized by Bruce Drake, Former Vice President for News and Information with National Public Radio (NPR), this way:

“But the Bowers' book has that ring of authenticity and is squarely aimed at the (for lack of a better cliché) "average Joe" who is looking for a life that is different and/or better and needs down-to-earth practical advice on how an American can make this transition,” and “I found this book to be far superior to the general run of guides on the expatriate life or retiring in Mexico. Some of the others of this genre just lack the ring of authenticity.”

Here was a former editor for the Washington Bureau with NPR News giving this review of two of my books. Then these comments come along:

Not worth the pesos, November 3, 2005

Truth as one sees it, June 28, 2007

Too much ranting, too little information, August 3, 2006

Where was the editor? July 19, 2006 (Every writer, even the big names gets this comment!)

I guess these "reviewers" didn't quite hear the "ring of authenticity" that reviewer Bruce Drake heard.

There is no reality, just perceptions.

Just an axiom? I don't think so. Not any more.