By

Bill Cottringer

“The main challenge in life is to close the gap between where you are now and where you really want to be.” ~The Author.

    We all have much work to do to close the above gap. Here are a Baker’s Dirty Dozen Gaps we need to figure out how to close before they widen past the point of no return:

1.      What is being looked at and what is seen. The place from where you look at in time and space, determines the lion’s share of what you see. The best viewpoint is usually in the middle where you can see ahead and behind, left and right and up and down. This always fills the mirror no matter what direction in which it is pointed.

2.      What is said and what is heard.

With this process, there are too many sub-gaps: Gaps between what is said and what is meant; what the mouth says that the brain translates and what the ears hear and the other brain translates, and all the possible confusion and misunderstanding in between. This is what miscommunication is all about.

3.      What is intended and what is interpreted.

First of all, it is never quite certain what exactly is intended because there are gaps between what is intended between the conscious and unconscious mind. Secondly intentions rarely match impact, which is usually very personal despite the original intentions. There are too many variables in between to count.

4.      What is known and what is practiced.

We may know more that we will ever understand, at least according to the early folk singer Rodriguez. The truth be known, we all know what the right thing to do is, as that is the easy part, but practicing it is where all the hard work comes in. But practice does make perfect. Closing this gap is what personal growth is all about.

5.      What is believed by this group vs. that group.

Beliefs are strange. Once formed and held to true from a variety of authorities, they become virtually imperious for changing  by an degree of valid disproof, no matter how valid that may be. All the conflicts between us and life, us and them, and us and ourselves, are based on beliefs about what is more true than not, without that option.

6.      What is said and what is done.

The question of the Information Age, is: At the end of the day when all is said and done, is it easier said then done, or done than said? It seems that most things are harder said then done and easier done than said. The gap between thought and action is imaginary.

7.      What words are used and what they really represent.

Words are supposed to represent actual objects in reality, that we can’t carry around to show firsthand. Unfortunately, the gap between the word and the object it is supposed to represent has grown so wide that any resemblance is lost. No small wonder miscommunication exceeds good communication.

8.      What is right and what is wrong.

The only real choice in life is which side to be on—right or wrong?  The trouble is we have been conditioned to listen to our noisy psychological conscience and tune out our more silent moral one. Unfortunately, this growing gap makes an almost un-closable one between right and wrong. And of course, belief systems lock things in cement. Never-the-less we must try.

9.      What is abstract and what is practical.

This gap is being brought to our attention with neon signs thanks to the virtual nature of the abstract Internet and the practical “meat-space” it refers to. The object of life has always been to effectively translate abstract principles to apply directly to life to get successful results. Closing this gap is called results.

10. What people think and what they do.

Some say what we think is who we are. That is only true when we carry out our thoughts in our head to our hands for action, and that is more often not the case than it is. If we each carried out all the good thoughts in our heads, the world would be a much better place. We should try more of this.

11. What reality is perceived and what exists.

There have been major psychological and therapy theories based on this gap. The reality is: You can’t change what you perceive to be real, until you accept the reality in which it appears. Once you do that, you are in a better position to see what needs changing and what doesn’t. Most things are okay the way they are.

12. What comes from free will and what is destined.

This is one of those ornery philosophical debates that ironically needs more airtime today than before. Our mental evolutionary path is to go from being conditioned by life experiences, to become free with our awareness of this external control, to shift it to internal choice on standards of right and wrong we have concluded from this awareness. This gap is not nearly as wide as it is believed to be.

13. What is popular and what is really true .

Finally, we have the main gap we can all question: Why does it take so long to question the popularity of the truth properly provoked? To open minds about this, we have to work on closing the gap on what we believe to be true and what is true beyond that belief. That takes fortitude, courage and creativity or closing the gap between what is real and what is ideal.

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. ~George Orwell.