Are you a sieve or a sponge?

We see what we expect to see.

The Heath Brothers, in their fantastic book Made to Stick, talk about our minds being like a sieve as opposed to a sponge – that to remember something it has to be big enough, memorable enough, sticky enough to get caught in the sieve.

My sieve got stuck when I recently saw a bland looking black bird carrying a very large, oddly coloured hot dog bun.

Huh?

Then my brain kicked in and remembered the fact that I’m in Brazil and realized that what I was seeing, wasn’t some unbelievably hungry bird with super strength carrying some behemoth sized bread but rather a wild toucan flying above me.

My radar had filled in the blanks.  I didn’t expect to see a toucan so my brain created something that was more ‘normal’ for me.

What do you expect?  And more importantly how does it colour your vision?

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