An odd thing to come across within oneself is the realization that ‘I cannot trust myself’, I cannot trust my own opinions, perspectives, thoughts, and feelings. So often a bias…

Clouds everything
and
Narrows my perspective

Take an easy example. I’ve known someone for a long time. I have an ample supply of memories to illustrate their intelligence, their humour and wit, their love for nature, their care for the well-being of others…and so on. And then something happens and you feel slighted and offended. Suddenly your attitude towards them becomes charged, heated, and clouds your perspective with a new colour. Your perspective narrows until all you can think and feel towards that person ignores, discredits, or perhaps even forgets everything which doesn’t serve to feed this new attitude!

Coming to be aware of this bias, feeling how lousy it is to narrow and cloud your perception of this person, you hit an emotional, stubborn, wall which tries to buffer any attempts you make in remedying your perceptual ailment. You find that little victories arrive upon steady insistence and that with the passage of time it is in fact possible to work your way back to a full[er] appreciation of that person. Yet that appreciation will never be quite the same. The work of bringing yourself out of that narrow and clouded perspective brings knowledge and awareness which wasn’t there before.