On Truth and Perception

Isn't it funny that while most everyone thinks they're somewhat unique and special, they simultaneously assume that everybody experiences the world like they do? Everybody is so much in their own world that they rarely even consider that the world might look, taste or feel different to someone else's senses. I'm talking about the perceptions that you can't directly compare - only through the faulty filter of language. 

For example people agree that something that looks blue is blue. Because they've both learned, that the hue they see is called blue. But how can you be sure that what you see there is exactly what somebody else sees? This definition is not based on your actual perception. Think about it. How would you describe blue if not with itself. I guess you can't really. Maybe some of our differences in taste can even be attributed to differences in perception. Who knows?

However, there are other things that you can communicate better, but rarely ever think to do. I've had my fair share of experiences with those. When I was in elementary school, for instance, I first got glasses. Before I got them I naturally thought that everybody's eyes worked like mine did. But when I got the glasses, I was amazed at how much there was to see all of a sudden, and I kept wondering at what I've been missing all this time. This babbling of mine about all that sure did freak my mother out. Maybe I even owe some of my character traits or at least some of my interests to this.

Then there was another much more recent experience with this type of thing when I had an argument with my friend about him forgetting a doctors appointment - yet again - and always messing up his scheduling. When I told him how I keep track of my schedule, he looked at me like I had just grown a second head. Of course I thought he was the one that was weird. After all wasn't he the one who was lucky if he didn't forget his own freaking birthday? So I started asking around, and it turned out that it really was me. Bummer.

So - nerd that I am - I went looking for it on the Internet. But how do you google something like this when you don't already know what it is called? The faulty filter of language again. So that is why, when I finally stumbled upon the answer, it was purely by accident. Turns out it's called visuo-spatial synesthesia. It's not an illness or anything, just a different way of making sense of the world. It's still hard to grasp how all these other people can function without an inner calendar like mine or how they calculate without number forms, since I rely on them so much.

The point here is, you can never know that other people see the world like you do. Have you ever noticed how different people tell the same story, but apparently they don't remember it the same way. Does that mean somebody lied? Or did he just experience it in a different way? And doesn't that overthrow the whole concept of truth as we generally envision it?