The Other Perspective

‘I don’t agree with you, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it’ – Voltaire

Life would be so much easier if we could all agree that there will always be other opinions, other perspectives. We expend so much energy in trying to get others to look at things from our own point of view, our perspective, somewhere believing that we are right. Sure, we could be right, but we may be right from our point of view only, and fact is...... there can always be other rights.

There’s a small story they told us during Vipassana, it’s a story from ancient India, which has since crossed into other traditions of Jain, Buddhist, Sufi, and Hindu lore, to essentially bring out the relativity of subjective experience: 

A monk , has an elephant presented to four blind men and asks them to describe what they think. To know what it was they each felt the elephant with their hands. Only, they each felt different parts of the elephant. The man feeling the leg said it was a tree stump. The man feeling the tail said it was a mouse. The man feeling the ear said it was a sheath of leather and the man feeling the trunk said it was a snake.

                                     

So each came up with a radically different explanation for what it was. Now each of them is right, from their own perspective they are right. But is it the only right? No, there are more rights than one. And, It’s also about seeing or knowing a truth, but possibly not knowing the entire truth.

We all view life from inside of our own frame; a frame that gets built over the years, through ego, habits, memories, thoughts, perceptions, emotions; about the self and about life. And we’re somehow constantly trying to align others perceptions to our own, almost believing that that is the reality. But think of the elephant and the blind men and you’ll see that they also have a perception of the same reality, but one that’s radically different to the others.

So first thing we need to understand and accept is that there are multiple realities, and everyone sees their own.

Does that mean perceptions never change? That people cannot agree?

No, perceptions can change and in fact that’s what learning and growing is. Sure we can also try to effect that change in others, but the actual change will happen only when the other is ready and willing. So attaching our expectations to the change in the other can be an energy sap. 

Here I’d again go back to the all encompassing guideline of ‘Accept what you cannot change, Change what you cannot accept, and Pray you have the Wisdom to know the difference’