Why First Impressions Can Mislead Us

The conversation between Shiva — ‘the Neelkanth’ called in the book and the one Panditji [Sage]. When Panditji asks Shiva to tell the colour of the leaf, he answers Green, but when asked again with a scientific view, Shiva explains that of all the sunlight colours, the leaves reject the ‘Green colour’ only and that’s why we see leaf colour as a Green one.

The above conversation is from one of the books, The Immortals of Meluha, from the Shiva Trilogy by famous author Amish Tripathi.

Out of all the colours, the leaf rejects the ‘Green’ one, but everyone considers ‘Green’ as the colour of the leaves. However, as mentioned in the lines, the leaves can be any colour except green.

We see people around us. We fall for them with what they try to show us, present to us, how they carry themselves. With these reflected or [rejected as per the leaf colour analogy], we try to make the image, an impression of them in our mind.

What they are throwing at us, we fall for it. As the ‘Green’ colour leaves, many around us pretend, that they are not in reality, do not have the type of nature and behaviour they are showing us.

Often, during job interviews, we unnecessarily have to pretend how polished and knowledgeable we are (if we are not). Then a few days into the job everything gets revealed, and that impression becomes the lasting impression, not the one we imitated during the interview.

Impression is what is and as it is. If we try to ‘make’ it then it becomes imitation.

Good attire, flashy gadgets, luxury cars, and lifestyle show the rejected or reflected colours of the person like the one in the story mentioned above, but the real colours of that person are how they behave with others, the colours that they are absorbing.

As they say, a book is judged by its cover, in real life, it became a must to make it more prominent, especially the things which in reality are not.

We see people around us — relatives, neighbours, colleagues, bosses, super bosses, especially politicians, and even ourselves.

Those who try to make an impression or strive to build an image/opinion about them, fail miserably when the reality comes out.

‘Try making an impression’ is a game of failure.

I would like to end this with a quote from ‘1Q84’, a book by Haruki Murakami, “Don’t let appearances fool you. There’s always only one reality”.