Experiment #2

In the second experiment in E-Squared, you give the Universe 48 hours to show you something. The question: “Do I see only what I expect to see?”

The first 24 hours, I was supposed to look for green cars or “sunset-beige” cars (what is sunset-beige?). I chose green, because it doesn’t seem to be a common car color and because I figured it was easier to define than sunset-beige. And, so far, I have never owned a green car. I’m not sure I’ve ever even driven a green car. We tend to see the cars we drive – that’s what is behind Pam Grout’s theory.

The second 24 hours, I was supposed to look for butterflies.

I thought, even as I wrote it down and set out about my day, that it would be much more likely that I would see butterflies the first day and green cars the second day. I had plans to take a bike ride along the bike trail with a friend on day 1, while day 2 would be a workday in the city. I sure hoped I didn’t see any cars on the bike trail, except maybe where I had to cross roads.

Thus, on day 1, I saw 2 green cars and numerous butterflies, too numerous to count. One butterfly was kind enough to stay still long enough that I could photograph it. I even saw 3 fake butterflies on a friend’s curtains, butterflies she didn’t even know were there until I pointed them out. I guess the decorations were put there by her son. I even saw, crawling along the bike trail, a huge future butterfly. I’d have stopped to photograph it if I weren’t struggling to keep up with my friend at the time.

Day 2, I counted green cars. I counted 27 passenger vehicles, 2 big trucks, and 2 farm tractors on the way to work. I counted the trucks and tractors separately, because I had failed to define “car,” and I wasn’t sure if other vehicles should count. Cars, pickup trucks, vans … I was sure they counted as cars. But those big, multi-wheeled trucks that haul stuff? Maybe not so much. I counted another 13 passenger vehicles taking a client to an appointment. I decided in the interest of public safety that I would stop actively looking and counting, but that I could still notice.

I did agonize over whether a particular car was really green or some other color. Some cars show up as greenish, but they are also grayish. There are 50 shades of gray car out there. At least 50. Maybe it is more like 150 shades of gray. So I counted anything that remotely resembled green.

On day 2, I also saw one, large fake butterfly on a fence. And forgot that I passed a butterfly museum, which has a lot of fake butterflies outside (so much for being observant). I remembered and saw some of those butterflies on the way home.

Day 3: the experiment was officially over, but I still hadn’t had a chance to read the next experiment in the book. I was still skeptical about the Universe just handing me green cars on a silver platter, as if my searching for green cars caused the owners of the green cars to get sudden urges to get into their cars and drive into my view so I could get proof of a point. And I didn’t know what it would prove, anyway, since I didn’t have any data on how many green cars I saw before I started the experiment. How could this experiment be quantifiable?

So on day 3 I looked for yellow cars. Yellow is easy to see. I saw a cab. I saw a van with a company logo. Should I count those? They aren’t private vehicles. How about those yellow construction equipment vehicles? It was then that I realized I was overthinking the whole thing. The point wasn’t that the Universe was putting these things in my way so I could see them, the point was that I was seeing them and noticing them because I was looking for them. I was noticing all green or yellow vehicles because I was actively deciding to notice them.

This isn’t such a profound revelation: 99% of the time, when I go looking for something, I can find it. Write a 20-page paper to support an opinion, complete with citations from at least 5 sources? Check! For some reason, it’s easy for me to find articles that are remotely relevant to my point of view and to twist them somehow to support my argument. That’s how I got through college and grad school. That’s what people do with the Bible to support just about any view imaginable.