My thanks to Little Whip and Sally Jacobs for inspiring this line of thought.
There is an old expression "Perception is reality".
Imagination and perception. How we perceive our world and imagine it to be in our own mind is pretty much what our world is to us. These mixed with a bit of hard reality are what really make up our individual worlds. I doubt that there are two people who live in the exact same world.
Now I'm not talking about how we imagine the world should be but rather how we imagine the world is. For some people the world is a nice, civilized place where people don't behave in a violent manner and they resolve their problems through discussion. For some people the world is a violent place where the only way to solve a problem is through physical violence. Do these people even live on the same planet?
For some people meals are something that is served by the staff and are to be enjoyed in the finest of surrounding while for other people a meal is whatever can be salvaged from a dumpster and eaten quickly before someone else kills them for it. Are these two people really living in the same world?
Some people imagine the world to be a place of numbingly mundane routine. Others experience excitement and adventure on a daily basis. It's a beautiful world filled with wonders to be appreciated for some, and a world of deplorable horros for others. Same world?
I can't help but think of my own world. I work in the trucking industry. For me it's a wonderfully free lifestyle that allows me to travel all over the country, see sights I might never see otherwise, pretty much be my own boss, and meet all manner of people. To me it's a great world of never ending education and adventure and I love it. But I meet people all the time who do the same type of work, have a terrible attitude, and hate it with a passion. For them it's a miserable world of constant problems, stress, and pseudoslavery. Same world?
For some the world is all about politics, for others it's sports. Some see the current world situation as desperate and hopeless while others see the same world situation as promising. For some their entire world is about blaming a particular national leader for all of the evil in the world, and others find the same idea laughable.
Do we all even live in the same universe?