Same senses, different perceptions

“Trying to taste the difference 'tween a lemon and a lime/Pain and pleasure and the church bells softly chime.” - Andy Partridge (Image by WikiImages)

When I’m wandering the lonely supermarket, there’s always a song playing that doesn’t fit the mood at all. “Endless Love” while you’re choosing avocados. “I’m Still Standing” while you’re grabbing some chicken from the meat case. “Hey Ya” while you’re standing in the checkout line.

If you know the song that’s playing, you can’t help but sing along, even if you’ve never chosen to listen to it and never would. But whether I know a song or not, there’s another level that my brain engages without my conscious thought: figuring out the chords.

I don’t have perfect pitch, meaning that I can’t tell you what notes are being played, but I can determine their relationships. From there, all you have to do is tell me what key we’re in and I can sit down and play the song based on the numerical relationships between the chords. “Four,” I say in my mind, listening as I reach for tomatoes. “Five, one, six.” The pieces come together.

I used to think this was magic when I saw my uncle’s girlfriend do it at a party, sitting at the piano and playing whatever people suggested. But I learned that it was not. A decade or so later, I could do it, too. It was a matter of a lot of repetition and some intentional practice.

Many of us develop expertise that seems magical to others. My brother, a software developer, writes code that looks like a jumble of meaningless symbols to me. My cousin is an auto mechanic who knows the configuration of every Lexus engine. I have a number of friends who speak multiple languages fluently. The human brain is incredibly well suited to making sense of complex systems if it is consistently exposed to them.

I’ve had this experience in music, tennis, fiber crafts, photography, and audio engineering, among other things. Most recently, I’ve gone from seeing a bunch of sailboats in the harbor to being able to identify some basic types: Sloop, schooner, catboat, catamaran. I’m seeing the same things, but my perceptions are totally different.

As a teacher, I’ve had the pleasure of opening the door to these kinds of revelations for many students. It’s fun to see how they begin to grasp systems of music notation, algebraic expressions, grammar, songwriting, and more, in many cases eventually surpassing my own skills in a given area.

However, I’ve also seen people become intimidated when they’re exposed to new arenas, believing that they will never be able to understand. They assume that the success others experience is the result of talent. They don’t see that we all have the “talent” to change our perceptions if we have the right support and context — and enough time.

Yes, some people are able to make sense of a new system more quickly than others. But speed isn’t everything. We all have a higher level of perception available to us if we are willing to invest the time and effort. The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix isn’t a true story, but the way all the chess nerds read and study constantly — that’s real. They are able to memorize and recognize entire historical games because they’ve constructed layers of small sequences that help them to make sense of ever-larger sequences. A series of moves is condensed into one concept, and multiple concepts are linked together. Most of us won’t put in the work to do it, but the same information is available to all of us if we want to make the investment.

Currently, I’m coaching The Marketing Seminar for the third time, having taken the course a couple of times prior to that. I am amazed at the patterns I can see as a result of spending hours upon hours engaging with the course material, the participants, and their work. I just keep seeing fresh possibilities, deeper insights, unexpected twists and turns. This isn’t where I started and it isn’t where I thought I would end up. It’s been endlessly surprising and challenging. When I look back on my work from earlier in the process, I see it with new eyes. Same input, different perceptions.

As a learner, I seek these opportunities for growth. I see others who shy away from them, and I know why. The pain of not seeing what they want to see — what they think they should see, what they believe others are seeing — is too much. These are the kids who clam up when they’re asked a direct question they don’t want to answer (these days, they can just drop off the Zoom call). The adults who pay for a course but don’t finish it, who buy the equipment for a new hobby and never use it.

I get it. I have done all of those things. And it’s okay, too. We don’t need to be good at everything, and we don’t need to subject ourselves to discomfort all the time. But if there’s something you really want to do — something you really want to understand — you may be surprised at how persistence will help you begin to see more than you can see now. If you stick with it, you will know what all of the symbols mean.

You can train your senses to process specialized information that was inaccessible at first. And you don’t have to know at the start how you’re going to get there — you just need to trust that you will. As you proceed, more of the hidden world will open up to you. You’ll see.

Where have you developed expertise that surprised you? What would you love to be able to do or understand if you could get through the frustration of the initial stages? I’d love to hear in the comments.