Saturday at dusk I was enjoying a drink at an outdoor cafe in Hong Kong. This place was on Lantau island, a good distance from the huddled buildings and teeth-rattling trucks on Hong Kong island. It was quiet, mostly, with birds chirping as the sun set. Then I heard my name loudly called across a large granite park. “Scott!” someone was clearly yelling. I craned my neck to see who was calling me. There was no one there.
I asked my girlfriend if she heard my name called. She heard something completely different. What she heard did not resemble my name. We quickly concluded that no one was calling me. I had heard my name among relatively little noise. My mind’s audio pattern recognition had what is called a “false positive”. This is when we wrong identify a pattern that does not exist. In my case I heard my name because the repetition of years has conditioned me to hear it.
It occurred to me in later reflection how our expectations influence our perspective of the world around us. A good mood turns a reckless taxi ride into an amusement park thrill. A bad mood makes the same trip terrifying. In fact fate rarely presents us with events purely good or bad. Life is messy and surprises come in some part sad, some part frustrating, some part uplifting, and often funny. Our attitude at the moment amplifies some of those feelings and causes us to miss others. The world is painted with our expectations.