We see the world differently you and I. How great is that?
What you see is not what you get. How you see is.
The object is to keep asking yourself “What is ‘my’ truth? What do “I” see…and not allowing the so called ‘experts’ or peer groups to define your perspective. Trust your gut. You don’t usually need validation when you already know what feels right first. Notice your world from a centered place that trusts in your own information gathering strategies as well as your intuitive intelligence. The tricky part is really knowing if our observations are really our own, if we are merely parroting someone else, or, if we have seriously considered opposing ideas. Most thoughts are obviously not original. We are influenced by so much. However, making an effort to seek out ‘your’ truth from the options available to you, a perspective that is authentically yours, adds value to discourse.
A great and, OK, dangerous place to practice learning to understand a different point of view, is in the middle of political or religious debates…fertile ground for stretching our abilities to see in a different way. The only way this can be successful is to ask, ask again and listen. The goal is not necessarily to adopt the perspective. It is to understand it…to see it through someone else’s eyes which is basically a figure of speech since that is impossible on so many levels. Its like noticing cloud formations through someone else’s eyes. Your friend says, ‘look, it looks like a horse’s head.’ Hmmmm. Nope. Looks like a steam engine to me. For the life of you horse’s head does not show up. Frustrating but you’ve made the effort to look for it. That’s how it can be with people when it comes to highly charged issues. The frustration levels that arise because of our inability to see the ‘same thing’ in the clouds can get ridiculously stressful. Some literally have viscerally painful responses to opposing opinions. Well, maybe we were not intended to see in the same way. A myriad of reasons make that so and a lot more interesting besides. My work here, I’ve decided, is to notice the differences in how we see and to grow from them, accept them or not, but stay detached from the need to adjudicate. It’s the process of gathering insights that counts. It pads our perspectives account which is necessary for understanding and compassion.
It takes effort to retrain how we see and courage to stand there. Neither is it easy relaxing into another way of observing or translating what it is we see. I’m not saying you ‘must’ change your information gathering system. So much of how you do that came in the box you were shipped in. I’m just saying that having expanded ways of perceiving is empowering, more inclusive and enlightening.
The world you were born into is but one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you. They are unique manifestations of the human spirit.” Wade Davies
Obviously that applies to other people, ideas, points of view and so on that beg to be honored.
Next post: Some things that get in the way of trying on new perspectives.