In our first dialogue on “Getting Real” we decided to practice one of the exercises Campbell suggests. Its located on Chapter 2 under the section “What do you see?” and it describes how to separate WHAT IS (what you actually experience) from WHAT YOU IMAGINE. This is crucial in getting real because many times we misinterpret our experiences.

 

The exercise began with very shallow examples, we were each to find a partner and say 3 things which we could see and disentangle them from 3 things we inferred from our observation. I was partnered up with Chacho and we began with things such as “I see that you have a sweater from certain college in the US, I imagine that either you wanted to go there or a family member went there.” Or “I see that you are wearing glasses, I imagine that you can’t see very well”. Though they feel kind of obvious there’s always a possibility that things may be different.

 

We gathered back into the complete group (back then we were 18 students) and things started getting…real, in a very colorful way of real. You were to say something about someone but with complete honesty, and though some examples were funny others began getting personal. I remember Gaby told me that “I see you become very aggressive when someone attacks you, I imagine it’s because you’re the youngest of your family and you’re used to get everything you want at home.” Though she didn’t really practice the exercise properly (You can’t SEE if someone’s being “aggressive” or if someone feels “attacked”)  and I knew this wasn’t the case, her statement still made me very confused about how people perceived me. Again, it was something out of my control and as we’ve learned in the book, we like being in control of things such as how others perceive us. Then someone told her that “he/she (I don’t remember who it was) saw how she treated Morris (Our teacher of Ancient Greek), and how she/he imagined that was due to lack of education.” This lead to her becoming a bit flustered, everyone feeling a bit uncomfortable but voicing in their opinions into one of our first honest group discussions (I think it’s worth mentioning that it was during our first weeks of the program so everyone was being a little too polite to each other before this).

 

In the end we spoke again more calmly and reminded each other that this was just an exercise, however part of the exercise had been real, and though it wasn’t exactly a moment of “agreement” we all felt like the door to create something new had just been open. We weren't in "separate rooms" anymore but we were all sharing a present experience.  I remember this moment vividly because I felt truthfully that I could say what I honestly thought, and I could hear what other’s honest opinions were without the fear of sacrificing friendship, reputation, or feeling “unsafe”. An environment and culture where honesty is valued over politeness started to be constructed. Looking back I can see how positive these discussions were to our culture since they lead to the practice of many honest Socratic dialogues and we all gained very much from everyone’s truthful understanding and opinions.