'We see and understand things not as they are but as we are' Christopher Columbus, in the 1440s, during his voyage to America, saw three mermaids and the described as a glimpse of women from the sea. Did Christopher Columbus imagine the mermaids because he was interested in fantasies or did he actually see them? On the one hand, I believe that we understand and see things not as they are but as we are, on the other hand we do not agree with this statement. The way we see things reflects on our personality and each of our personalities is different and some people also have a similar personality. “We do not see things as they are, but as we are” is a Jewish proverb. The proverb talks about how we are engaged in sense perception. This implies that every individual has 6 senses and the 6th sense is within oneself. We understand things as we are, but not as they are, this could also be related to the emotion from the knower's point of view when I am afraid, then I see images pass from me, so is- what do i see the images in my brain or is it of me? I relate this statement to two ways of knowing, sensory perception and emotion. Sensory perception, the primary way of knowing, is the physical response of our senses to stimuli. There are only 5 senses: sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell. Sensory receptors first pick up signals after being simulated by the brain. Information is transformed into sight, taste, touch, hearing and smell. These senses have become part of our lives. Without them, we would be abnormal beings in this world. The senses surround us every day and every minute of our lives. Emotion is our second way of knowing, it is man's direct experience of the world. Emotions are the most powerful things in this world...... middle of paper ...... changed the look of the world and things. When a hotel wants to stay in business, they photoshop the photos of the room and make it look pretty, but the truth is the rooms are really bad. The hotel wants people to see the room as beautiful as they stay in the hotel. Photoshop foreshadows the wrong things, so never believe what you see. We see and understand things as we are, but not as they are. In some cases this statement is true and in other cases it is false. We don't always see or understand things the way we want, but we also see things the way they seem, not exactly the way we want them to. The world is an illusion in itself, this proves to us that we do not always have to see things as they are but we could also see them as we are. It is the choice of the human mind to understand things and every mind is different; it's the nature of man.