Personal Economy and the Ability to Perceive

I really resonated with Barbara Herrnstein Smith's opinions about interdependency and the radical contingencies of value. I had the feeling as I was reading her essay that it was dense with important material and that many different sections could be the subject of an interesting discussion. (However, according to Smith's own words, I must be careful when discerning why I found such value in her work. Due to the countless factors that influence one's ever-changing personal economy, I could attribute my appreciation for her essay to my appreciation for a clear and concise article in the Norton Anthology after having read so many that I did not fully grasp, to my desire as I reread her article to find thought-provoking material to blog about, to my preconceived notion that as a modern American author I would more easily understand what she had to say than I could understand the older, foreign authors that we have read, to my remembrance that the article had made solid sense the first time I read it, etc, etc. These factors unquestionably influenced my thought process as I read, and if I were to read Herrnstein Smith's article again in another six months, my personal economy would be drastically different).

That being said, I would like to reflect on a small point that Herrnstein-Smith made that I felt was particularly insightful:

"Moreover, the subject's experiences of an entity are not discrete, or strictly speaking, successive, because recollection and anticipation always overlay perception, and the units of what we call 'experience' themselves vary and overlap."

The idea that recollection and anticipation cover up or conceal our ability to perceive struck me as true. When we enter into experiences, be they reading a novel or simply meeting an old friend for a cup of coffee, do our expectations make a stronger impact upon our perception than what actually takes place while reading or conversing? Are we so consumed with past and future impressions and ideas intersecting that we cannot accurately read what is happening in the present moment? How often do I read a piece of literature with a notion in my head of what I should be looking for as I experience the text? How often are these notions colored by my recollections of past experiences and by my anticipation of what the text will be? Are our experiences ever really isolated in the present when they are supposed to be taking place, or are they, as Herrnstein-Smith suggests, representative of boundless intersection and overlap?

I have wondered before about my own perceptive abilities. I am asked all of the time to perceive, to opine about my impressions of what has taken place just a minute before or within the last year of my life. So often I assume that I am capable of perceiving and of perceiving accurately, yet, is this really true? As experiences blur and build upon one another, I am forced to process quickly, and I sometimes wonder if I have drawn the right conclusions about what has happened even within my own small life.