This video explores the concept of bridging the interpersonal gap through a personal narrative. It delves into the idea that perception is a creative act, emphasizing the infinite possibilities in interpreting situations. The author recounts a true story from their youth, illustrating how personal backgrounds shape interpretations. The narrative underscores the importance of understanding others’ perspectives and challenges the default interpretations we often make. The video suggests a three-world model—other person, their actions, and our interpretation—to bridge the gap. It touches on personal development and team dynamics, highlighting the creative nature of perception and the need for effective communication.
Transcript
The three worlds. This is part two of Bridging the Interpersonal Gap. After this roleplay, when you’ve given me the words, now you’re going to find out that seeing is a creative act or perception is actually a projection of our own material out there on reality, or we’re making it all up. Now. This is, for many people, a shocking, surprising discovery. And many people resist this revelation because it just is so scary. But maybe, as you’ll see in a few minutes, we actually are walking around seeing things, not realizing in the act of seeing we’re actually creating what we see out there. Okay, here we go. Here’s how it works. Something happens in the world. It’s been encoded by a person over here. What’s the theoretical number of things that might have gone into that action? It’s actually infinite. Let me tell you a story. This is a true story. Some of my stories are not so true. This one is true. I’m 17 years old. I’m a senior in high school in Richmond, Virginia. I’m very shy. I don’t have a girlfriend. I’m a Boy Scout and a swimmer and all that. And. But I have friends that are girls. But I don’t have a girlfriend. And Marie Welch, who was the head cheerleader, said, Johnny Sher, it’s New Year’s Eve coming up. You need a date. My heart starts pounding. Oh my lord, what happens on a date? And she said, don’t worry, I fixed you up. Fix you up with Diane. Oh my God. My heart started pounding because she was the cutest girl with the face and the personality and everything.
Just absolutely amazing. And I thought, my goodness, what kind of a deal did Marie make with Diane to get her to go out with me? She should be going out with the quarterback of the football team or something like that, Marie said. Don’t worry, you’re going to be fine. Just go take her to Tommy and Susan’s house. We’re having a party on New Year’s Eve, so I go pick up Diane. She gets in the car. She is just cute as a button. I take her to Tommy and Susan’s house. We get out, we go inside and there’s a recreation room with a TV up in the corner. Johnny Mathis playing on the record player. Hey, this is a long time ago, and everybody’s dancing, and so I’m. I’m, you know, I’m on a learning curve, like vertical man. My learning curve is vertical because I’m trying to figure out what do you do on a date? I’m just terrified. So I’m passing as a normal teenager and I’m doing okay. And then at one point everybody stops dancing and looks up at the TV screen. I’m sitting on this little bench there with Diane, and people start counting ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. You know, the ball coming down in Times Square and then everybody starts kissing. Now, I had never seen kissing like this in 17 years. I never saw my mother and father hug or kiss. Now, I had been kissed like by my Aunt Mae, who would say, come.
On, Johnny, let me give you some sugar.
Speaker1: You know those sloppy kisses like that. But I’d never seen kissing like this before. So, Diane, bless her heart, she takes my face and she turns my face around. And she gives me the sweetest kiss. And I’m thinking, ah, now. Now I understand why people like to do this. Oh yeah. So we danced a little more. And then it’s time to take her home. So we go out and we get in the car, and on the way back in the car, I’m thinking, I wonder if I could get another one of those kisses. So we pull up to her house, I go around, open the door. Hey, it’s a long time ago. We walk up to the front door. She takes out her keys, opens the door, goes inside, and I sort of lean into the door, and she closes the door and the door locks, and from inside the door I hear her talking, and what I heard her say was, Johnny, don’t get any ideas. The only reason I let you kiss me is because it was New Year’s Eve. That’s what I heard, and I’m devastated. I crawl back on my hands and knees, back to my car and drive away. Now I had friends, buddies of mine that would have walked away from that door saying, boy, what’s wrong with her? I walked away from that door saying, what’s wrong with me now? What’s the theoretical number of things that could have been happening behind the door? So let’s say this is Diane behind the door. Speaker1: What’s the theoretical number of things that might have been happening behind the door? The answer is infinite. There’s an infinite number of things. Maybe her dad was standing there, and she wanted to show her dad that she was being a good girl. Maybe these are all things that have explanations that have come up in the course of our seminar. Maybe she was testing me to see if I was really serious. Maybe she wanted me. She’d already gone past her rule of not kissing on the first date, and she didn’t want me to think that she was easy or something like that. I know, I know another one that somebody suggested that maybe she was so excited by that first kiss that she was afraid to. Let me in. She couldn’t control herself. And I thought, yes, that’s finally. After 50 years, I finally figured out what happened behind the door. Why not? I’m making it up anyway. Why not make up something that has some possibility in it? Okay, well, what’s the theoretical number of things that might have been happening in a young man’s world outside the door? What’s a theoretical number? Again, it’s infinite, but no. How many interpretations were actually available to me in that moment? One.
And I brought it with me to the party. Why would she go out with me? So right away I interpreted that of course she wouldn’t want to kiss me again, and I drive home devastated. Now this is the way the world works. There’s an infinite number of things going on in that other person. There’s an infinite number of possibilities for you to see what’s going out there. But because of your history, your background with this person or other situations, there’s a kind of a default interpretation. Now, what’s the chances of these matching up perfectly every single time? Very, very slim. Yeah. Here we go. Here’s why. Because seeing is a creative act. And here’s an example. Piaget, the famous Swiss child educator, said that when a child sees, the name gets when we teach the child the name of the bird, the child loses the bird. Now they only see the label duck or robin or whatever the name of the bird is. They no longer see that particular bird. Fascinating. Here’s another one. The three empires. Somebody said, how can an umpire stand behind home plate in an American baseball game? The ball comes flying in 100 miles an hour. Without any hesitation, the umpire says strike or ball or something like that. So this guy started interviewing umpires and he got three umpires and he got three different answers.
How do you do that? Without any hesitation, the first umpire said, it’s easy. If it’s a ball, I call it a ball. If it’s a strike, I call it a strike. And the second umpire said, hey, I just called them away as I sees them. But the third umpire said, you know what? They ain’t nothing till I call them. Until I call it a ball or a strike. It’s just somebody throwing a ball and another person catching it. When I name it, when I call it a ball or call it a strike, that’s what it becomes. And that leads me to the third example, which is Adam in the garden in the Bible and the Genesis story of creation. There’s this really interesting passage that says the creator formed all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to Adam to see what he would name them. And here’s a key point. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that is what it became when Adam called it. That’s what it became. Now, if you think about this experience you had with me earlier, where I was being the boss and I was, you know, portraying myself in a certain way, I was actually scared. But maybe you saw me as aggressive or angry or punitive or some word like that.
The instant that you named me that way, that’s what I became, at least in your world. This is what happens. And this is why we have the three worlds that have to be bridged. There’s the other person. There’s what they say or do, and then there’s what we interpret. So the way to bridge the interpersonal gap, the way to bridge these three worlds, as I like to say it is, let’s get our bubbles on the table. This is what I understood. Where were you coming from when you said this or did this? This is what I made up about it. That’s a really powerful way to say it. When you said that this is what I made up or this. This is what happened in my world. What was going on over there for you? If you want to know the step by step process for how to bridge this gap and work with the three worlds, look at the video on drama. Drama. I think you’re going to really like that because you’re in a drama now with this person, and by practicing the drama process, you can create, you can co-author together with the other person a new drama, one that has more possibility in it and one that bridges the interpersonal gap.
