Here is a little parlor game to play during this Thanksgiving holiday as you are with family and friends -- ask the group to to quickly shout out the color of a traffic yield sign. What did you and the others answer?If you are like the majority of people I surveyed you said "yellow". However, yield signs have not been yellow in the U.S. since 1971, they have been red and white for over 40 years! What I found so interesting in this simple test of perception, is that many of those who perceived the yield sign as yellow had not even been born in 1971; thus debunking my theory that only those older than 50 would say "yellow". So why do we continue to think a yield sign is yellow? Perhaps this illustrates what the Dalai Lama taught me when he visited Boston last month..."just because we perceive it, does not make it reality". How very true!
Take a moment this Thanksgiving and truly step into mindfulness, check out those yield signs, and notice that perception is not necessarily reality.