People have been sharing the moments that changed how they see world – 17 mind-altering experiences

Once you’ve got a bit of life experience under your belt, it’s all too easy to get set in your ways. But every now and then something happens to challenge your perspective.

That’s the thinking behind a head scratcher set by Reddit user pankaj662, who tasked the good people of r/AskReddit to share their biggest epiphanies by asking this question:

‘What’s a moment that permanently changed how you see the world?’

Prepare for your mind to be blown, here are the top replies…

1.

‘Coworker died on a work trip at 36 years old of cardiac arrest; He was greatly loved by everyone, job posting up three days later, haven’t heard his name since.

‘Take care of yourself and your people because a job won’t.’
-GUmbagrad

2.

‘I was 19, working a dead-end job at a massive 24-hour laundromat in a pretty rough part of town. It was around 3:00 AM on a Tuesday, totally empty except for one guy who looked like he’d been wearing the same suit for a week straight.
He wasn’t washing clothes. He was just sitting there, staring at a dryer spinning. I was annoyed because I wanted to close up the back section, so I went over to tell him he couldn’t just hang out. Before I could say anything, he looked up and asked, “Do you ever think about how much of the world is happening right now that you’ll never see?”

‘He told me he had just lost his daughter in a car accident two days prior. He said he couldn’t stay in his house because the silence was “too loud,” so he came to the laundromat because the sound of the machines reminded him of white noise, and the warmth of the dryers felt like someone else was in the room. He stayed for two hours. We didn’t talk much more, but I sat a few chairs away and just… existed with him. Up until that night, I saw every person I passed as an extra in the movie of my life. If someone was slow in line or cut me off in traffic, they were just an obstacle. That guy taught me that every single person walking past you is carrying a weight that would probably break your back if you had to carry it.

‘It’s been a long time, but I still can’t look at a stranger without wondering what “silence” they’re running away from. It turned me from a cynical kid into someone who actually tries to be kind, because you never know who is just looking for a little bit of white noise to get through the night.’
-googliebears

3.

‘Realizing that adults are just older kids who have zero idea what they’re doing. It’s just life on improvisation mode folks’
-WinkFeather

4.

‘Going to college and meeting the kinds of people I was raised to hate, and becoming great friends with them. I still offer to be an ear for them if they have anything they need to vent about.’
-LowResGamr

5.

‘9/11. People have forgotten how great the 90s were.’
-DotaBangarang

6.

‘Using an anglicised name on an otherwise impressive resume. More interviews and replies in 3 weeks than I had had in 8 months of job searching. Now I roll my eyes when people talk about “merit”

‘Also the number of people who got mad at ME for doing that like I was the problem…’
-ValBravora048

7.

‘It changed for me when I sat and watched our beloved chief of police on the witness stand swear on the Bible to tell the truth and then spend two full days lying like a mother********.’
-MailFar6917

8.

‘I no longer wonder why civil wars tend to be bloody and how it can get so bad that “brothers fight brothers”.

‘I‘m American, by the way.’
-ARazorbacks

9.

‘I was at a summer camp for kids and they woke up the kids in the middle of the night to take them to the forest and tell spooky stories, where one of the counselors was hiding and scared them all to run back.

‘I wanted to go but fell back asleep instead of getting up out of bed. When the kids all got back screaming and running a few of them told me what happened, but they all had wildly different stories of what happened. It was a ghost, an animal, a woman, a demon, a horse..

‘I learned that even if someone witnessed something firsthand, their brain will make stuff up to fill in the blanks without them even realizing they are “lying”‘
-Slawth_x