Today in class, I was feeling impatient. But as I noticed it, I was able to acknowledge the fact, take responsibility, and generate positive energy and the power to choose my reactions. As my students spoke, I had the opportunity to recognize my feelings, and by waiting for my turn to speak, I expanded my awareness and enjoyed the process of inhibition.

In the end, I shared with my students how I was feeling and asked if they had noticed anything about my actions and reactions. Most of them didn’t notice any difference in my habitual responses, but one of them observed a slight spillover when I asked them to be quiet while others were performing.

Even though I agreed with him, I’m certain it was very mild and brief. Still, it’s important to acknowledge it to prevent any spillover of anger. Perception and knowledge are very different, and I’m teaching my students to understand the difference between the two. As you become more certain in your search for truth, you let go of the belief that you already know.

Perception is the immediate sensory experience or interpretation of information through your senses (sight, sound, touch, etc.). It’s how things appear or seem to you.

Perception can be:

• Subjective and vary between individuals
• Mistaken or illusory (like optical illusions)
• Immediate and unreflective

Example: You perceive a stick in water as bent

Knowledge is traditionally understood as justified true belief – it requires not just that you believe something, but that it’s actually true and you have good reasons for believing it.

Knowledge:

• Aims for objective truth
• Requires justification or evidence
• Can be built from perception but, goes beyond it

Example: You know the stick is actually straight, despite how it appears

The relationship: Perception often provides the raw data for knowledge, but they’re not the same thing. You can perceive something incorrectly (a mirage in the desert), but you can’t truly “know” something that’s false. Perception is about how things seem; knowledge is about how things actually are, backed by justification.

This distinction raises fascinating philosophical questions: Can we ever have knowledge without perception? How reliable is perception as a source of knowledge? These debates have occupied philosophers from Plato to contemporary epistemologists.

As we understand the differences we are able to recognize that our intention define our habilite to perceive the truth, in between words we find the desire either to connect or to separate. One thing we know for certain is that imposing one’s perceptions on others often arises from fear—a fear that seeks control and reveals a lack of empathy.

Here are some examples:
Perception: Reading Twitter threads created a misperception of knowledge about geopolitics that didn’t match reality.
Knowledge: Instead of relying on Twitter threads, she consulted multiple credible sources, which gave her accurate knowledge of geopolitical issues.

“One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you’re right, but not enough about the subject to know you’re wrong.”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson

I started this post by sharing how I was able to let go of my impatient feelings and bring myself to a balanced understanding from the inside out. I was sure that I didn’t feel any anger throughout the process. However, my perception wasn’t entirely accurate—one student still sensed a slight trace of it. This reminded me how important it is not to make assumptions without knowing the facts. The simplest and most effective approach is always to ask questions.