Please don’t try this. But if you close your eyes and flick your eyelid - it hurts, it really hurts. But you will also see a spark. The pressure on the eye causes the receptors in your eye to see a bright light - but there was no light and you had your eyes closed.
Our eyes are deceiving. Hundreds of optical illusions demonstrate how our eyes can be deceived. When my son was a toddler, he was particularly fond of his toy elephant. I took him to the zoo enclosure at Whipsnade and he held his toy elephant up to those in the far distance. Suddenly three elephants paraded past us on their daily walk. My son was shocked and burst into tears. He received a swift lesson in depth perception that day. He was totally traumatised, but a lesson, nonetheless. But close one eye and your own depth perception will also falter. That is also why one-eyed pirates continuously crashed their ships.
Our eyes are deceiving but they say seeing is believing. We are surrounded by things that we cannot see with the naked eye - atoms, viruses and signs of intelligence in the British Government. Our eyes are not our best receptors and yet vision is the sense that we most rely on.
Our eyes are deceiving but they say first impressions count. We judge people on their appearance and apparently, we make that judgment within 7 seconds. I would argue even less now. People searching for the love of their life, their soul mates, their life partner swipe them away in a flash on apps such as tinder (or grinder, no judgement there) based solely on a photo, a doctored one at that. But surely it is more beneficial to listen to people before making that initial irrational ill-informed judgement.
Many years ago, I was on a skiing holiday. One evening we stayed up in the mountains in a tiny taverna. There was much drinking, much music and much merriment. But only one toilet. As the men were chivalrous, we left the toilet to the ladies and all lined up outside on the balcony drawing yellow giraffes in the snow. One of the lads leaned forward, looked over the balcony then rolled over it and fell on the piste. Away he rolled down the slope and in our inebriated state we laughed and thought nothing of it.
We returned to the taverna and continued with drinking and singing. I recall there was a dwarf there, he joined my friends for Karaoke, in his hazy state my friend told the dwarf to stand up, to reach the draw punched him in the salopettes. All of a sudden, the doors of our cosy taverna burst open, in came the wind and snow and there blocking the doorway stood the Abominable snowman. Well that is what we all thought for 7 seconds in our inebriated state. But then the snow melted, and we realised it was the guy who had fallen over the balcony. It had taken him several hours to walk back up the mountain. Had we been listening we would have heard his moaning and complaining and not been momentarily deceived by our eyes.
Our eyes are deceiving, and they do say don’t judge a book by its cover. That is unless your job is chief judge of the book cover awards. But I agree. I use to breed mice and bought Of Mice and Men – nothing to do with mice, The Never Ending Story finished on page 200 and fifty shades of grey is not a Dulux paint chart. I mistakenly bought the book of pi rather than Life of Pi – 3.1415926 I could go on.
Communication studies suggest that 55% of communication is visual, 38% is vocal variety and just 7% is what you actually say. Toastmasters teaches us how to communicate with body language and vocal variety. But toastmasters also recognise that messaging, sentence structure, vocabulary and rhetorical devices, that is what we say, is also important.
One last anecdote. I caught a taxi last week and the guy driving, clearly from overseas, was very smartly turned out in a suit and tie. I told him he seemed over dressed for a taxi driver and he explained that he was refugee and in his home country he was a lawyer. I was impressed, and I asked “surely you are over qualified as a taxi driver, what are the qualifications to become a lawyer back home”. To which he replied, “a driving license”.
We have two ears as well as two eyes. Our ears are always switched on, but we may choose not you use them. Don’t be blinded by this perfect physique, judge with your ears not just your eyes.
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