Believe what you want

The words arrived as a dismissal, the conversational equivalent of a door closing. We'd been discussing a recent event—nothing abstract, nothing theoretical. I was sharing what I'd witnessed directly. They were holding tight to what they'd heard from sources they trusted.

When our accounts didn't align, there was no curiosity about how two people might experience the same situation differently. No room for "tell me more about what you saw." Just this: believe what you want.

The phrase stung—not because I needed them to agree with me, but because of what it implied: that my direct experience was somehow less credible than information filtered through other voices. That trusting what I'd witnessed made me naive, while trusting what they'd been told—by sources they'd come to rely on, by voices they believed had their best interests at heart—made them more informed than me.

I wasn't doubting my own knowing in that moment. But I recognized the cultural assumption beneath the dismissal: the person standing in front of you, sharing what they witnessed, carries less weight than the distant voice interpreting events through a particular lens.

When did we learn that the unknown messenger deserves greater trust than the known person telling their lived experience?

The Authority We've Learned to Trust

Somewhere along the way—gradually, imperceptibly—we learned a hierarchy of knowing. Expert opinion ranks higher than personal experience. Published research trumps what your body tells you. The voice with credentials or a platform carries more weight than the voice of someone you know, standing in front of you, describing what they saw.

This wasn't a conscious choice. It was a slow training in whose knowing counts.

Your body says you feel better without dairy, but the nutritionist says you need it for calcium. Your direct observation conflicts with the official account, but who are you to trust your own eyes? You know your workplace culture is toxic, but the engagement survey says morale is high.

Over time, we learn to add the qualifying phrase: "Well, I think I noticed..." "It seemed to me..." "Maybe I'm wrong, but..."

We learn to doubt the very thing that should be most reliable—our own direct experience of what is.

But the training goes even deeper. We've also learned to distrust the direct experience of people we know when it conflicts with narratives we've absorbed from distant voices. The person you grew up with shares what they witnessed. The colleague who's always given you something to think about describes what happened. The friend whose judgment you've respected tells you what they saw.

And instead of curiosity—tell me more, help me understand what you experienced—there's dismissal. Because what they're describing doesn't match what we've been told is true. The distant interpreter, the one who wasn't there but speaks with authority, somehow becomes more credible than the known person standing in front of us.

When did we learn that the unknown messenger deserves greater trust than the known person telling their lived experience?

We've built entire systems around the idea that filtered knowing is more trustworthy than direct knowing. That the person who wasn't there but read about it has a clearer picture than the person who was. That the algorithm analyzing our behavior understands us better than we understand ourselves.

And maybe what’s most damaging: we've learned that if two people's direct experiences conflict, one of them must be mistaken. There's no room for the possibility that both might be reporting accurately from different vantage points. No curiosity about what each person's perspective might reveal. Just the assumption that someone's lying, deluded, or "believing what they want."

We made a trade. We gave up trust in our own knowing—and in the knowing of people we're actually in relationship with—for the promise of certainty from distant authorities.

What We Lost

The cost of this training isn't just intellectual. It's not simply that we might miss important information or make poor decisions based on faulty authority. The cost is much more personal.

When you chronically doubt your own direct experience, you lose connection to your pilot light—that core sense of what's actually true for you. And when you dismiss the lived experience of people you know in favor of distant narratives, you fracture something essential in those relationships. In both cases, you're choosing borrowed certainty over direct knowing—whether your own or someone else's.

Borrowed certainty feels more solid than nuanced, lived experience. The expert's definitive answer is cleaner than your messy reality. The official narrative provides clear edges where actual human experience feels uncertain and complex. But it can't provide what matters most: the grounded sense that comes from trusting what you actually know. The depth of connection that happens when you stay curious about someone else's experience—even when it doesn't match yours. The willingness to be changed by what another person shares.

The exhaustion isn't just from doubting yourself. It's from having handed over the authority to know—to the algorithm, the expert, the distant voice—and discovering that borrowed knowing can never feel like your own. You're not even checking your experience against external validation anymore. You've replaced it entirely.

This pattern didn't happen overnight. And it doesn't have to be permanent.

What Becomes Possible

Reconnecting to direct experience—your own and others'—doesn't mean becoming closed off or dismissive. It doesn't mean rejecting all external information or deciding you're the only reliable source of truth.

It means reclaiming your starting point: what you actually know from living it.

Your pilot light—that core sense of what's true for you—becomes the foundation rather than something to override or ignore. You can still learn from experts, consider research, listen to trusted voices. But you're no longer asking those sources to tell you whether what you experienced was real. You're starting from what you know, then adding nuance and context.

This shift changes everything in relationships too. When someone shares an experience that conflicts with your understanding, curiosity becomes possible again. Not the performative kind that's really just waiting for your turn to correct them, but genuine wondering: What did you see? What was that like for you? How did you experience that?

You can hold your own knowing AND stay open to theirs. You can trust what you witnessed AND recognize their vantage point revealed something different. This isn't relativism or "everyone's truth is equally valid." It's recognizing that lived experience is complex, that different people can accurately report different aspects of the same reality.

This means standing firmly in what you know while remaining genuinely curious about what others know—even when those knowings don't align.

So here's the question worth sitting with:.

What might you discover by trusting lived experience over filtered narrative—

both your own and that of people you actually know?

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