Appearance on the display
Everything looked correct on the display. The times were right, the settings were right, only the installation behaved irrationally. A short power failure had disturbed its internal order. The display continued to present a coherent truth while reality followed a useless logic.
Only after I deleted and recreated the schedule did behaviour correspond to the display again. That raised a question: are there power failures in the brain as well?
Perhaps not electrical ones. Sometimes one experience, a sentence, a loss, disappointment or fear is enough. Outwardly everything looks unchanged, but inside the logic has shifted.
Two honest realities
If a small display can show a truth that does not exist in practice, how difficult must it be to understand a human being? Two people can experience the same situation. Both are honest and both believe they know the truth, yet they inhabit different realities.
They look through filters made of experience, fear, hope, education, ideology and memory. Every brain turns perception and feeling into a personal model of the world. The truth is that everyone has a brain. The reality is that not everyone enjoys using it.
Conflicts arise not only in politics and religion, but also in marriages. We hear a sentence, see a glance, observe behaviour and believe we have understood the other person. Perhaps the behaviour was correct and only our interpretation was wrong.
Anamnesis before judgement
Perhaps an anamnesis is needed first. What happened before? Which history does the other person carry? Which experiences formed that person’s reality? Perhaps the sentence was not the problem. Perhaps my brain gave it a meaning that was never intended.
A small difference between reality and perception can damage friendships, shake marriages and divide societies.
Symptoms and causes
The power failure taught me to distrust the display and search for the story behind it. Several apparently independent faults disappeared when one underlying cause was corrected. Cause and effect had been chasing each other in a circle. One click interrupted the vicious cycle.
A system is understood only when we stop treating isolated symptoms. This may also apply to people. We often search for truth when we should first search for reality.
Filters on the internet
Today many people seek truth online. They read headlines, compare sources and trust search engines or AI. But filters act there as well: algorithms, editorial choices, interests and personal convictions. Sometimes they do not merely improve the presentation of reality; they improve reality itself until it fits the story.
The necessary ability is neither believing everything nor rejecting everything. It is asking: what is the history behind this?
What the parable may mean
Observation does not replace understanding. A suspicion does not replace anamnesis. A quick answer does not replace conversation. A truth we believe we have discovered about another person may be only our perception.
Give the other person the chance to be understood before deciding that you have understood them.
Great parables often begin with something small: a seed, a lost son, a Samaritan, perhaps even a brief power failure. The lesson is not about technology but humility. If a device can differ from its display, how cautious should we be when we believe we understand a human being?
At seventy I am a young author. That is the pure truth. Seventy years are the reality. Both are correct. Sometimes only the meaning given to a word lies between truth and reality.
