You are the only one who experience your thoughts. Or, to say it a different way, your thoughts create your experiences.
Between the world and your experience, there’s always a thought.
This is a difficult concept to grasp, but it’s the truth.
If someone tells you something and you get upset, it’s not what the person has said that makes you upset, but it’s a thought in your head that makes you upset. The thought appeared because of what the person said, but ultimately it’s the thought that creates your reactions and feelings. A different thought will create a different feeling.
You react to your thoughts. You live in your thoughts.
Every experience you have is created by a thought.
Do I mean that you can never experience the “objective” outside world? Yes, that’s what I mean. Living in your thoughts implies that you can never be objective because, ultimately, you can only see the world through the thoughts that appear in your head. The person beside you on the train or the woman scanning your items out at the grocery store will see the world through the thoughts that appear in their heads.
So there’s no right or wrong in terms of who “sees the truth.”
No human being will ever see anything objectively.
When you are arguing with someone, remember that you’re reacting to the thoughts in your head at the same time the other person is reacting to the thoughts in their head.
Don’t take anything personally: not what the other person says nor what you say. You’re both just reacting to thoughts passing by in each other’s head. That’s it. There’s nothing personal there.
Let me rephrase the first paragraph of Khalil Gibran’s poem “On Children” (highly recommended if you’ve never read it and have children) to state this more beautifully:
Your thoughts are not your thoughts.
They are the thoughts of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.