A Glass Half Laurel? ...or Half Yanny?

Did you hear Laurel?   Or Yanny?

It’s been impressive that, despite all the other societal and political debates we are having, that the debate over this sub-second audio clip is the thing that captured so much of our attention over the month of May 2018.

WHY DO WE CARE?

Why is that?   Why do we care so much about this?

 53% of over 500,000 people answered on a Twitter poll that they heard a man saying the word "Laurel" while 47% reported hearing a voice saying the name "Yanny."    Those percentages may seem familiar (and a little eerie).     It seems that in this law-of-large-social-media-fed-numbers era, we are often seeing splits closer to a 50/50.

But why did this one capture our interest so much?   

In 2015, it was the Blue Dress – Gold Dress debate when that infamous washed out picture of a dress again went viral and 10 million tweets mentioned the dress, using hashtags such as #thedress, #whiteandgold, and #blackandblue

These two cultural events are obviously similar:

• One because they don’t matter all that much to any of us really,   
• but Two because they are both instances where we are debating our very sense of fact and truth.  

Some of us hear (or see) one thing … others hear (or see) something else.   

Of course, there is plenty of science to explain this.   We’ve probably all learned about the High Frequency/ Low-Frequency theory of why some people are more wired to hear one part of the sound vs. the other.       A similar explanation was given for the Blue Dress/Gold Dress illusion, and really for many of the optical and auditory (and event scent-based) illusions:

OUR BRAINS ALL WORK SLIGHTLY DIFFERENTLY

That is an important consideration when we are asking The Question.

How we consider whether OUR Glass is Half Empty?  …or Half Full… will clearly be affected by our own unique ability to perceive our Glass and what’s been poured into it. 

NOTE: If you haven’t read the book (A Glass Half Empty? …or Half Full?: A Children’s Book for Grown-Ups):

1. May I first suggest this book to you – it’s an easy read and benefits the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation;  available in multiple formats on Amazon.com.
2. For context, the “Glass” in this allegory is your Life and we need to consider What our Glass is being refilled with – whether we pour it in or someone else does.

I believe this is part of the reason this Question is so difficult to discuss with other people.   

When I look at someone else’s Glass, I am very likely using my OWN Brain (gosh I hope so) and my own mental model of what is in your Glass.  

• I will be using my brain to evaluate whether there is any Opportunity in your Glass. 
• Likewise, I may see Cracks in Your Glass – that you do not; or just as likely not be able to see the Risk in your Glass that you are so concerned about.

SO – WE ARE LEFT ALL ALONE TO EVALUATE OUR OWN GLASS?

We each need to find the balance in our own Glass…but we certainly don’t need to do that Alone.    Indeed, nothing could be further from the truth.

The help and love of others is critical to each of us in finding balance in our Glass between the part that is Half Full (or whatever it is full of) and the Half that is Half-Full-of-Opportunity.

We need to value our own understanding of what is in our own Glass.   HOWEVER, we also should remember that we might only be hearing “Laurel” when “Yanny” is right there to be heard.    

The help of others to share with us their perceptions about what is in our Glass can be very, very important and it is necessary for us to open our ears, hearts, and minds to the ideas that others may have about our Glass.     Remember that it’s YOUR GLASS and ultimately YOU have to decide when to drink, when to refill and how to manage your Glass….but all the more reason to get some advice and perspective from those we trust.

And also all the more reason to be wary of the advice we receive about our Glass from people we *don’t* trust.    They may be sincere in their beliefs about your Glass – but they may not have the same definition of Truth that you do.

HOW TO HELP OTHERS WITH THEIR GLASS: INVEST IN OTHERS

Naturally, this works both ways and the more we Invest in Others, the more we will see that Return on Investment in our own Glass.

But when we are helping someone else with their Glass; it is important for us to remember that we may have legitimate differences in perception and perspective.

This can be especially challenging when we are very close to the person with whom we are working.   Family members can easily slip into assuming that each other have the same perspective (after all, they are family) …when, in fact, we have ALL experienced the challenges of being misunderstood by family members.  

I can assert this with such great authority because I can assume all of us were once (or are now) Teenagers.

AGAIN, WHY DO WE CARE ABOUT LAUREL VS. YANNY?

Perhaps it was just a Social Media distraction for us as a Society.   We are definitely in an Era where our shared definitions of Truth and Facts are being challenged – although we can probably look back to almost any era of humankind and say the same.

The rather tame by comparison debate we’ve all had about hearing Laurel vs. Yanny in that tiny audio clip may be so interesting to us all; because in that less-than-a-second clip…we can so clearly prove that we each have different perceptions.

If we can harness this, and learn from it,  we have an opportunity to decrease the arguing and increase our ability to Invest in Each Other’s quest to find Balance in the Glass.

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Dan Schuck is an advocate for Mental Health Awareness and the author of A Glass Half Empty? ...or Half Full?: A Children's Book for Grown-Ups.   Available at Amazon.com in Kindle, iBook and print formats at booksellers near you.