There's a study I've come back to many times over the years.
In the 1970s, researchers raised kittens in environments containing only horizontal stripes or only vertical stripes during a critical period of development.
The kittens could see.
Their eyes worked perfectly.
But when they were later introduced to the normal world, something remarkable happened. The kittens raised around horizontal stripes struggled to respond to vertical objects. The kittens raised around vertical stripes struggled to respond to horizontal ones.
Their brains had adapted to the world they had been exposed to.
As someone with a degree in early childhood education, I've always found this fascinating.
Long before children can explain their experiences, they are learning from them. They're learning whether the world feels safe. Whether love is consistent. Whether their needs matter. Whether they belong.
My grandmother taught me this long before I ever learned the science behind it.
As a young child, she experienced significant stress when her mother became ill. Looking back, I can see how those early experiences shaped the way her nervous system moved through the world for much of her life.
Not because there was something wrong with her.
Because the brain adapts.
In neuroscience, there's something called the Reticular Activating System, or RAS. Think of it as a filter. Every second, your brain is sorting through more information than you could ever consciously process and deciding what deserves your attention.
If you've ever bought a white car and suddenly started seeing white cars everywhere, you've experienced it.
The cars didn't suddenly appear.
Your brain simply started looking for them.
Sometimes I wonder if our beliefs work the same way.
If we learned early that people leave, do we become especially good at noticing evidence that people leave?
If we learned that life is a struggle, do we become highly attuned to struggle?
If we learned we're not enough, do we walk past a hundred pieces of evidence to the contrary and focus on the one thing that confirms what we've always believed?
Not because those beliefs are true.
Because they're familiar.
The hopeful part is that awareness changes things.
The brain remains capable of learning throughout our lives.
Which makes me wonder:
What are the "horizontal stripes" you've spent your whole life looking for?
