tok reflection

Our last tok class was consice, consisting of only 5 people as the rest had either gone to Cairo for a MUN or decided to ‘bunk’ school. Though the class consisted of fewer people it was surprisingly a more interactive class. It was more like a conversation with each one giving our views. All 5 of us participated in the discussion with no one just sitting quietly and listening. in this tok class we started a new way of knowing, perception. Perception is the way we perceive things through our 5 senses. Miss Nehal corrected us when we used words like ‘look’ as during tok class we are supposed to use more technical terms like perceive. In this class we didn’t only discuss but also saw a video on perception. We even read an article that was titled, “Is perception reality?” this article uses various examples to discuss the phrase, ‘perception is reality.’ The example that I could relate to was the one of an adolescent. Often we form perceptions about ourselves on the way others look at us. The way others see us or the reactions of others, actually acts as a mirror for the way we see ourselves. I feel this statement is absolutely true as I have experienced this myself. We should also learn that we cannot control how others perceive us. We then came to the conclusion that ‘perception is reality’ is a factually incorrect statement as perception is NOT reality. The way I perceive a particular thing is different from the way another person perceives the same thing and so perception cannot be reality. We also discussed the quote, “it is not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” To look at something is to simply glance at it while to see something is to actually observe and understand that thing. This quote explains that perception doesn’t only mean to look at something but to see it using all 5 senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. It is only then that we perceive, through interpretation through our senses, we were then asked to chose the sense that we would not mind loosing and the one which we wouldn’t want to lose at any cost. To me the answer was obvious but others had different answers and this surprised me. For me eye sight is very important and the loss of my sense of smell was an obvious choice. Though everyone agreed that they wouldn’t want to live without their eyesight, some people actually felt that they didn’t mind losing their sense of touch. After this we had a long discussion where everyone was trying to prove their point. In the end we see that perception comes into play once again as each one of us perceive our different senses in different ways. Some senses are more important to us then others while for others those same senses are not that important. In this way everyone’s truth also differs and what might be true for me is not true for you.