Perspective
Takes approximately 2 mins to read
It’s not what you look at that matters, but what you see. It’s not what you hear that’s true, but merely a perspective that has been shared. Believe none of what you see and only half of what you hear. Your vantage point is another person’s escape.
At first glance, everything inside a box appears uniform, creating a maze of uniformity. But once outside its confines and gazing inward, its limitations become readily evident. When it comes to life’s tapestry, shifting one’s perspective is both beneficial and necessary - otherwise hope may escape us, hidden within shadowy corridors; by changing even slightly your position or angle of approach you enable that bright beacon of hope to pierce through, illuminating the path ahead.
My thoughts on perspective have left me asking questions about its true essence, whether or not it merely exists as an accumulation of opinions. However, I came to understand it’s far more than this - although thoughts and opinions may come and go in public discourse, real perspective arises from experiences, beliefs, cultural roots, acquired knowledge - this provides the fertile ground where opinions emerge - without foundational knowledge can an opinion truly hold weight?
Where perspective truly troubles me is in the face of hardships. It’s easy to say, “just look on the bright side,” but what if I’m confined to a “box”? Every side appears identical. Perhaps it’s not the bright side we should seek; instead, why not embrace the hardship for what it is? From that perspective, we can understand that nothing remains the same forever.
“Verily, along with every hardship is relief,”
“Verily, along with every hardship is relief (i.e. there is one hardship with two reliefs, so one hardship cannot overcome two reliefs).”
— The Noble Quran [94:5-6]
Shifting your perspective doesn’t require physical movement. While it can imply that, addressing hardships truly comes from the heart. Feeling pain envelops the soul, and that’s okay. Why would you want to merely heal suffering? Doing so suggests it might return. Wouldn’t you prefer to experience it and then let it pass? In doing so, you’ll learn lessons and emerge transformed.
“Recovering from suffering is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different.”
— David Brooks, The Road to Character
Perspective allows us to interpret situations, events, or information based on our personal experiences and knowledge. For instance, a child and an adult might view a playground differently; for the child, it’s a place of fun, while an adult might see it as a place for kids to develop motor skills or socialise.
Standing at a vantage point that widens your view provides more information, leading to more innovative solutions. It’s these vantage points that create the diverse components in your mind, allowing you to organise your suffering into manageable chunks. Without perspective, however, you’re left with a narrow viewpoint, which limits your innovation and results in a tangled mess as your starting point for problem-solving.
After hardship, ease truly follows. So, why do we need to find the bright side? It’s already there and always has been.