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In my quest to make some sense about human behavior– or at the very least, my own, I come over and over again accross the concept of perception.
Perception is defined as the coming to awareness of something through our senses. An input stimuli (reality) is traslated within us by a lot of things, mainly the brain, of course, but then it is transformed by our particular and unique set of beliefs and experiences.

So, perception is the process by which we, as people select, organize, and interpret information to form a meaningful picture of the world. And the clear intention is to form a meaningful picture of the world, not enough emphasis on meaningful.

So, last Saturday I was watching on T.V. the new Boston Lawyers show from David E. Kelly, who previously brought Ally McBeal so you kinda know beforehand what to expect. It was the first time I watched it and this lawyer, Sally, was undergoing her first trial as chief council. And she was pretty much losing it (in very funny ways, her client claimed he was innocent of stealing a wallet and mid trial the lady accusing him produced some photographs of the defendant taken by her with her little camera phone, LOL). So, she was losing and under pressure as one of the partners of the firm was there watching her performance, and at night, over drinks asked fellow lawyer, Alan Shore– played by James Spader– some advice on her closing statements. So he says, pull a rabbit out of your hat (an advice formerly given to him by a senior partner, played by William Shatner, whatever). And to “tell a story”, he says that some great closings begin with a compelling story about anything and when you have the jury in your hand, you make a connection from your story to the case, no matter how slim the connection might be and ask the jury to rule in your favor.

So Sally’s story went like this. She said to the jury that when she was about 15 years old she was in the kitchen of her house when suddenly her labrador came in holding in his mouth the body of the neighbors’ pet rabbit. She said that her dog was never known for killing anything but she knew that if anybody found out her dog will be in a great deal of trouble. They might even decide he was no longer safe for the neighborhood and take it away from her. This las thought was so frightening to her that she immediately decided to take the rabbit, wash it off as it was all muddy, dry him up with a blowdryer and put it back in the cage at the neighbors’ house in hopes that when they found him dead they might think he had died of natural causes.
She carried out her plan and went to sleep.
That night, her father came in the house and said that the strangest thing had happened to their neighbors. He said that the neighbors’ pet rabbit had died two days ago, and that some crazy person had dug him up, washed him, dried him and put it back on the cage! Purpose unknown.

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