If you’ve ever bought a car and suddenly started seeing lots of cars like yours, then you’ve been enlightened by what Thoreau is talking about. As we educate ourselves on topics, we suddenly see things differently. As we soften our hearts and start treating people with more kindness we suddenly begin receiving kindness back. Sort of like the law of attraction in a sense. Our brains have what’s called frequency illusion, also known as the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon. It is a cognitive bias in which, after noticing something for the first time, there is a tendency to notice it more often. It happens when increased awareness of something makes the illusion that it’s appearing more often. Simply put, the frequency illusion is when something you just found out about suddenly seems to crop up everywhere. It’s a different context, however, to see a car rust to pieces in the weather. The metal is actually changing its physical state. This isn’t the context of what Thoreau means by his famous quote.
Things do not change; we change.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
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