In law school, my contracts professor liked to tell this story, apropos to this situation. There are different versions of it floating around. This one includes some metaphysical pondering:
Three umpires are sitting in a bar, sharing a beer together. They begin talking about their job and the difficulties they face in calling balls and strikes. The first umpire states quite confidently, “There’s balls and there’s strikes, and I call them as they are!” The second umpire, with a slight look of disapproval, says, “No, no, no, there’s balls and there’s strikes, and I call them as I seem ’em.” The third umpire says, “You know, you’re both wrong. There’s balls and there’s strikes, and they ain’t nothin’ till I call ’em.”
And like that, nothing exists until we perceive, label, and interpret it.
Or, put differently: The first umpire claims we perceive the world as it actually exists. The second umpire claims we interpret the world that exists. The third claims we create the world through our perception of it.
Every single moment of our life we are experiencing something, even if we are not aware of what we are experiencing. Even while we are unconscious or asleep there is still perception. Neuroscientists now believe that within our brains there are over 11 million neurons firing each second! The firing of these neurons occurs when the brain is active and having some kind of experience. Thus, there is always something filtering through our mind.
Raw experience, though, almost never remains in that form. Once it rises to a conscious thought, we have already labeled and interpreted it. The colors and movement have become a baseball, and we’ve further judged whether it’s a ball or a strike, good or bad. it may seem like we are passive perceivers, but we are actually active engagers, though we are usually unaware that we are constantly interpreting, creating reality as it happens. This engagement happens automatically and seemingly our of our control, moment to moment. And it’s true, we can’t stop our thoughts. The only reality we know is our concept of it. Life is nothing till we call it something, and this is where mind training comes in. Through it, we learn to hold our concepts loosely, particularly those that allow unhelpful emotions to take over and cause us problems.
Disturbing emotions are so called because they hypnotize us, in effect, so they become “reality.” These particular thoughts cloud the clarity of mind so that it is completely obscured, and we act as if what exists in our mind is real, unchanging, immutable. We live our life constantly jumping from emotion to emotion, fearing and cursing the balls and strikes coming our way, and forget that we are the ones who created balls and strikes. To create a meaningful, self-directed life, we must confront the untamed, undisciplined, uncontrolled mental activity that we have let run us.
To take an everyday example, consider drinking a latte. initially, we drink coffee because we are thirsty; we enjoy the taste and smell, and we like how the caffeine gives us a boost. But eventually, our happiness depends on coffee. We feel we can’t start a day without it, and even more, we aren’t truly happy unless we’ve had “good” coffee, our favorite latte. And we no longer just drink our favorite latte; we evaluate each one critically, judging it too hot or too cold, too strong or too weak, too bland or too sweet, and so on. We become unhappy if we have anything that falls short of a “perfect” latte. Suddenly, every morning revolves around our “need” for coffee and our “desire” for the best, and our entire emotional self might hang in the balance. This is crazy. Sadly, we live much of our life at the mercy of such fantasies, and it is a wonder that lasting peace and satisfaction are elusive?
