Perspectives: What Shapes Them
The Six Blind Men and the Elephant is one of my favourite parables.
In a distant village, a long time ago, there lived six blind men. One day they heard that there would be an elephant in the village. Since they had no idea what an elephant was, they decided that despite them not being able to see it, they would go and feel it. So, the six went down into the village in the hope they would get a better idea of what kind of animal an elephant was. They each stood at a different place around the elephant and placed their hands on the body.
One of them touched the trunk and decided this animal was like a thick snake. His friend, who felt the leg, insisted that the elephant must be an animal tall and strong like a tree trunk. Since they never explored other parts of the elephant’s body, their impressions were based on what they had experienced. They reached no consensus and insisted on their limited perspective to be the truth.
Then a wise man joined them to enquire what they were quarrelling about. He then told them that they were all partially right and partially wrong. If they had been able to put their partial views together, they could have gotten a sense of what the whole elephant would look like.
You can imagine that such a story invites numerous important teachings and insights.
What shapes our perspective?
Listening to this story, I realized that our perspective is very much based on our past experiences, upbringing, the culture we were brought up or spent most of our lives in, our values, relationships, filters and senses. Everything we have been exposed to has the potential to form part of a unique understanding of ourselves, others and the world. Therefore, the perspective of two people will not be the same.
Not only is our perception informed by these external stimuli, it is also influenced by our personality and vice versa.
It doesn’t take much to imagine that the perspective of a person who lives with an attitude of the glass being half empty can’t be the same as the one who sees a glass as half full.
Relationships and Perspectives
Let’s apply the story of the elephant and the blind men to relationships.
I think we all have been guilty of insisting on our viewpoint which in hindsight was a foolish thing to do. The assumption that our viewpoint is the only valid one and our tendency to judge others based on our framework can stretch, sour and even potentially break a relationship.
There is no doubt that your mood, internal landscape, values, likes and dislikes and the ingrained beliefs of a lifetime set the tone of how we see our partner, a co-worker or a friend and of course ourselves and life in general. Depending on the situation, different parts of ourselves get triggered and influence our experience. Meeting a first date, for example, activates different hopes, ideas, fears and beliefs compared to meeting your superior for your monthly assessment.
We are all complex and with all our baggage and hidden triggers, we cannot honestly say we know exactly who we are ourselves with absolute clarity. When that is true, how can we see someone else for who they truly are? Judgment and assumptions present themselves whenever we meet someone based on our internal compass of what is right and wrong, should or not should be, our concepts of how life should be lived and so on. And so, the other person gets labelled straight away as cute, engaging, supportive, weird, a loser, arrogant, ambitious and so on. The arrogant, pushy, loud colleague is unlikely to be perceived as insecure and self-conscious, even though that may be the core personality behind the mask.
One Scenario
There is a crisis at work and your schedule is packed back to back with meetings which of course run late, with lots of talk and little action. During your only break in the day, you also have to bring your mother to the doctor and she complains the whole way there. Then someone honks at you because they thought it took your mom too long to get out of the car. And it’s only 3pm. Back to work.
By the time you finally reach home in the evening, your mood has already been darkened by the day’s events. You open the door and the first thing you see is your partner chilling on the balcony with a glass of wine, with the music of his favorite band playing loudly, music you can barely bear on the best of days. You may throw your bag into a corner, frustrated that you now have to make dinner. You start having an angry conversation in your mind, about how little you are cared for and how difficult it is to live with someone who takes things so easy. You can't help but hook onto a stream of generalizations such as “men don’t care about housework,” “life is hard,” “no one loves me” and so on. Even worse, due to some early child programming, you beat yourself up just thinking about taking time out to chill because that is equal to being lazy.
Your other half peels himself out of the lounge chair, approaches you with a big smile to give you a loving hug, but you can’t take it any longer and you set off on a rant. (Why Do You Get Pissed Off?)
You are unaware that earlier that day he lost a business deal, got tomato sauce on his white shirt at lunch and arrived home drenched, being caught in a downpour. He is now hurt, feels rejected and gets defensive. To him, you changed from the most attractive woman he'd like to chill out with to the always-niggling and never-satisfied overworked partner, who can’t relax and who is never satisfied.
An Alternative Scenario
What if you took a deep breath, scanning yourself emotionally and mentally to check in on what’s going on before you entered the house? Or even before? Then consciously ask yourself how you will deal with the next five minutes? How would you like to greet your partner? What would have happened if you grabbed a glass of wine too and spent half an hour together on the balcony, listening and sharing your day?
We have a choice to create an opportunity to get to know each other better, just being with each other, letting each other BE.
“The optimist sees the donut; the pessimist sees the hole.”