This morning, I had a little AHA moment about awareness while volunteering at a meditation centre. Last night, the course teacher asked me to support the course because there was no female teacher. So this morning, from 4:30–6:30, I was in the meditation hall supporting the morning session instead of working in the kitchen. The interesting part was that the kitchen volunteers didn’t know about the change. When I arrived for breakfast, I noticed the looks on some of their faces. One person even came up to me and asked, “Did you oversleep? You didn’t come to work this morning.” And I suddenly realised what was happening. They saw one fact: I wasn’t in the kitchen and from that one fact, the mind filled in the rest: she overslept… she didn’t come to work… maybe she’s being irresponsible. But none of that was actually true. We often say, “Seeing is believing.” But what if what we see is only part of the picture? What we see may be real, but what we make it mean is not necessarily real. We don’t just see reality. We see a piece of it, and then our minds complete the story. That made me realise how often I probably do the same thing — with other people, with situations, and even with myself. Awareness is not just seeing what is happening. It’s also noticing the story my mind creates about what is happening.