Before leaving for school, I would always ask my mom for some cash so I could buy myself a snack. I loved eating flavored crackers. I would watch my classmates eating all kinds of junk food, and I figured \u2014 if they were doing it, it must be okay for me too. This was back in elementary school. I still clearly remember one day, as I was heading to my music school classes, my stomach began to hurt. Normally, it would hurt a little and then stop. But this time was different. The pain was so intense that I dropped to the floor and began to cry. What was wrong with me?<\/p>\n
When I shared this with my mom, she immediately took me to the doctor, who handed me a giant list of all the things I could no longer eat \u2014 a list filled with my favorite foods! Why was this happening to me and not to my classmates? (It probably did happen to them too; I just didn\u2019t know about it.)<\/p>\n
Bobby Duffy, in his book\u00a0Why We\u2019re Wrong About Nearly Everything, talks about how we misunderstand so much about life \u2014 from diet and eating habits to happiness, money, immigration, and more. He writes,\u00a0\u201cWe are wired to notice things that confirm our worldview, and ignore those that contradict it.\u201d[1] Why is that? There are billions of people in the world, which means billions of different stories and perspectives on life.<\/p>\n
For example, I love watching soccer. So when someone shares their opinion on games and which teams are better, I would politely (and sometimes not so politely) interrupt and correct them because, in my mind, my favorite team, Lokomotiv, was the best team in Russia (even though that wasn\u2019t exactly true). I was creating \u2014 and in some ways still am \u2014 a world that feels comfortable and happy for me to live in. What does that mean? It means that many times, I believed my worldview was better than that of others.<\/p>\n
Duffy reminds us that it\u2019s easy to misunderstand statistics and the \u201ctruths\u201d we think we know. On every single topic, people\u2019s opinions often differ wildly from the actual data. He writes,\u00a0\u201cOur personal experience and stories are vivid and powerful \u2014 but often misleading.\u201d[2] Could it be that we tend to rush to conclusions based on what we see, rather than taking the time to dig deeper into people\u2019s real thoughts and experiences?<\/p>\n
For example, at my school in Moscow, everyone knew I was a Seventh-day Adventist (SDA). But before anyone took the time to learn what we actually believe or what the church stands for, I was already labeled as part of a cult. Not gonna lie \u2014 it hurts when people jump to conclusions without searching for facts. (This reminded me of last week\u2019s reading, where Simon Walker shared how people often make assumptions before actually searching for truth.) The reality is, yes, there are some crazy SDAs out there, but at the end of the day, all I wanted was to be someone who follows the Bible and Jesus.<\/p>\n
So why was my stomach hurting? Even within my family, my parents would say, \u201cOh, just a little bit of cake won\u2019t hurt.\u201d And as true as that might seem, a little bit, repeated five times a day, makes a big difference. I kept eating things I wasn\u2019t supposed to. My stomach pain became a normal part of life. But then, when I left Russia and came to a boarding school, the only food served was vegan! Not vegetarian \u2014 vegan! Where was my chicken? Where were my favorite flavored crackers? As much as I was forced into that change, I realized something: on a vegan diet, I never experienced that stomach pain again. Don\u2019t worry \u2014 these days, I still get to enjoy my chicken. But the more I focus on clean, simple foods, the better my body feels.<\/p>\n
The truth is, the food industry is a money-making machine, not a hospital telling us what\u2019s good or bad for us to eat. Duffy warns us about the dangers of misunderstanding, writing,\u00a0\u201cWe tend to feel more certain than we should, and that certainty leads us to double down on beliefs that might be flawed.\u201d[3]<\/p>\n
Footnotes:<\/strong> Before leaving for school, I would always ask my mom for some cash so I could buy myself a snack. I loved eating flavored crackers. I would watch my classmates eating all kinds of junk food, and I figured \u2014 if they were doing it, it must be okay for me too. This was back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-dlgp04"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41339,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41338\/revisions\/41339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n[1] Duffy, Bobby.\u00a0Why We\u2019re Wrong About Nearly Everything: A Theory of Human Misunderstanding.\u00a0PublicAffairs, 2021, p. 34.
\n[2] Ibid., p. 57.
\n[3] Ibid., p. 189.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"