Perception is defined as how you view the world and the people around you; it is influenced by how you see things, your interactions with people, and how you interact with things. Discernment can either be positive or negative and this is affected by how one thinks. How you see and think of yourself affects the way you think and judge the people and things around you (De Lange 37). How we perceive ourselves is determined by three main components. Self-awareness tends to explain who we are, it is vital because knowing who you are helps to define you and know your worth. The second component is self-concept, this is simply what you think and feel yourself, this is important since it affects your attitude toward the outside world. The third component is self-esteem, which is the overall value we assign ourselves. It is simply the courage we have and confidence in ourselves toward achieving a particular objective
This paper will focus on public versus private perception based on lecture lesson 3. Our work and research are based on a daddy-less daughter who narrates how she always feels about herself when other people are discussing or talking about their fathers. She narrates to her father when they first meet and the experience is so good that she has a lot to tell the father about what has been happening in her social life (Zimmer-Gembeck 42).
She also gives detailed information on how the daddy planned a day shopping and water park, on that very day the dad bought her two pairs of shoes, cloth, and swimming clothes. It was a nice experience filled with much confusion since she had not known her dad for nine years and here her grandmother was taking her to someone, she claimed to be her father and the last three letters of her name came from the first three letters of his name.
The daddy-less daughter was positive about meeting her father. At this point, she had a self-perception of joy. The joy all other girls and children felt because they had their fathers and that feeling of having your parents around. The daughter has much fun with her father she feels that her world was complete and what she was missing had been filled. At this point, we get to see the self-based perception. The daughter at first was thinking of herself as a loner in a way that the father was not around and this affected how she viewed others. She kept admiring the lives of others feeling jealous of seeing other people with parents (Giananti 122).
To hear those who had their parents were lucky and she did not see herself in that bracket. She had been living for nine years with no one to call a daddy and she even felt like she did not have one, this lowered her self-esteem.
The joy of a daddy-less daughter was temporary, when she woke the next day, her father was gone, and the father was not around to give her all she wanted. Her joy faded away since her feeling of having no father was back. The gap was also evident since the father who was filling it was long gone when she was asleep, which was not positive for her. The daddy-less daughter expresses her frustrations on how she wanted to feel loved and safe under her father’s wings. The daddy-less child wanted to have a new life with the daddy in it and around, she wanted it to boast her relationship socially and romantically (De Lange et al 54).
The author goes ahead and narrates how no child in their growing and upbringing should have experienced what a daddy-less daughter was going through. He says that we are to have all parents love, if possible, the availability of a thing that if not taken will affect life socially and romantically.
The daddy-less daughter in realizing that the father is not around might not be part of her life soon reflects on it. She thinks about how positivity she can build herself without blaming herself which she isn’t supposed to blame for her father not being around. Our perception affects our way of thinking. Daddy-less daughter does the same, she thinks of how to make her life positive without faking anything (Giananti 64). Faking does not last for long and ends up making people feel bad about what they faked in their selves affecting their perception, and bringing the conflict of public versus private perception.
Public perception is the image that we portray ourselves to the outside world. The image that we make people judge us on who we are and sometimes it might not be the real us. Most people in the world live a double life, that is the image and profile that they give the outside world and the real them differ. The daddy-less daughter did not want this to happen to her; she wanted to live her real life and for her father to be part of her life and love her like other girls her age. She wanted to count herself among the fortunate people she thought other daughters were but now the feeling was short-lived. Daddy-less daughter decided to perceive herself in a positive matter something that will make her happy and improve her self-esteem not that she was aware of who she was and what she wanted in this life.
In the daddy-less daughter, the narrator’s perception is negative. The negativity is seen in how he describes the life of a daddy-less daughter when the grandmother was taking her to see her daddy something that brought small happiness to her then disappeared. The narrator goes ahead and says how the mother went to jail because she got pregnant with the father when she was 16 years old and the father was 13 years old. Daddy-less child internalized all that she was being told by her grandmother and this kept her feeling bad.
At this point, we understand why the narrator’s perception is negative since he knows the child is daddy-less and her mother was arrested and she is her only custodian. She could best try to make her not know what happened to her rather keeping on telling her about all those things that happened to her (Lechowska 13). This brings the negative perception of the narrator but the daughter tries her best way ever to bring positivity in life and make herself happy.
In conclusion, perception comes from how you feel about yourself and those around you. The daddy-less daughter realized that the gap in her life should not affect who she is. Public perception is how people see and judge you on what you have shown or market to them about yourself. You influence your public perception with what you feel and make others feel about you. On the other hand, private perception is what you are and what you do when you are alone (Zimmer-Gembeck 66).
Private perception always affects your public perception. In Daddy-less daughter public perception is about what the narrator and the grandmother think about her and it is negative but in private perception is what the daddy-less daughter feels about herself and it is positive. She develops positivity after realizing that nobody will feel the gap but herself and make herself happy and this will also improve her self-esteem.
Works Cited
De Lange, Floris P., Micha Heilbron, and Peter Kok. “How do expectations shape perception?” Trends in cognitive sciences 22.9 (2018): 764-779.
Giananti, Andrea. “I know how I know: perception, self-awareness, self-knowledge.” Synthese 198.11 (2021): 10355-10375.
Lechowska, Ewa. “What determines flood risk perception? A review of factors of flood risk perception and relations between its basic elements.” Natural Hazards 94.3 (2018): 1341-1366.
Zimmer-Gembeck, Melanie J., et al. “The self-perception of flexible coping with stress: A new measure and relations with emotional adjustment.” Cogent psychology 5.1 (2018): 1537908.