I read about North Korea allowing visitors from South Korea to enter the country, visit relatives they had not seen for a long time, and return home. It is sad that people want to be together but have to part because of government decree. I am reminded of the topic of generalities and abstractions in our lives.
I am married. My name is Bill. This computer is mine but your phone is not. The American Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck wrote that she flew over New Jersey and New York. She could see for herself that there was no border between them. She wrote that New Jersey is a "myth". But the citizens, the government, the transportation companies and many other people and organizations live by and depend on that myth every day.
Just today, Firefox browser program suggested I might be interested in an article that appeared in "Inverse" stating the results of a pair of scientific studies of the brain.
https://www.inverse.com/article/48300-why-is-it-hard-to-focus-research-humans
The studies found that our brains flicker every four seconds. I gather that they pause, look around to check for dangers and then continue to concentrate on our knitting or driving or whatever. It is not actually news to thinkers that we don't really see the world because of the necessary steps in the vision process but we depend on and remember our version of what we see. Same thing with sounds, including sounds of what you say to me.
It is old information that I can't and don't fully take in a scene. I am wired and experienced to select what seems important and note that. I don't remember what color dress my mother wore to my wedding. I probably looked at it but didn't register as an important memory to be kept. Before my wedding, I wasn't married. After my wedding, I was. The book "Sapiens" discusses the very large number of abstractions and myths and arbitrary decisions our species lives with and by. Laws, customs, games and much of our lives are focused on or laid out according to ideas and distinctions we made up. I am chemically connected to my daughter but not to my wife. I live in a certain place but it is only in Wisconsin by custom and agreement. I know there are towns near the borders of countries that have changed the countries they are in without moving. The decision that one of the countries extended to here was changed to only be extended to there.
