Perception and perspective.
These are interesting thoughts for sure.
Because the way I see the world is most assuredly not the way you see the world, perhaps at all.
A little story.
The other day, I was sitting down in a coffee shop, and a man sat down beside me, and he was soon joined by another person.
And the person sets down a pair of sun-banned glasses.
They’re like Google glasses in that sense.
They have a sensor, perhaps a camera inside them.
They can connect to your device, etc.
Really cool.
The one man obviously wants to sell it, so he begins to explain the qualities of these glasses.
The other chap picks them up, he examines them.
He says, yes, I’ve had a pair of those glasses before.
The other fellow suggests that he wants to sell them because he wants to buy another pair, etc.
etc.
And then the potential purchaser picks up the glasses and studies them quite closely and says, there’s a scratch here.
Oh, and the seller takes umbrage at this.
What are you talking about?
I’ve baby these glasses, there’s no scratch here.
And the other man, the potential buyer says, no, no, look, there is a slight scratch.
So in the end, there’s a bit of an argument, if you will, and the potential buyer gets up and just walks away.
So, gosh, after a few minutes, I just couldn’t help myself.
I said to the man who was selling the glasses, like, why did you get so distressed?
He said, well, I’ve had those glasses for a long time, and I’ve looked after them.
There was absolutely no scratch on those glasses, period.
Then I said, but that’s not the point, is it?
The other man believed there was a scratch.
He said, yes, he was just saying those things.
And I said, well, maybe not.
Maybe he really thought he saw a scratch.
So why didn’t you just say, well, that’s the reason I had made the glasses so inexpensive.
That’s why I had lowered the price.
And the fellow was quite startled, and he said, well, yes, I guess that could have been the case.
I could have said, well, that’s why I’ve reduced the price.
So here we have the classic difference between my perception and your perspective.
And I think all of us have had this happen, haven’t we?
We’ve actually gone and we’ve listened to people, and they’ve made statements that were absolutely, seemingly stupid or nonsensical, making no sense at all.
But then you realize, just wait a moment, just perhaps they believe that to be true.
Now I find increasingly if you confront people when they make foolish statements, politically, let’s say, for instance, they just get angry and get up and walk away, but this is no solution, is it?
Because we ultimately have to learn somehow to speak to one another.
So if we come back to my example, the man selling the glasses, of course, was in error, because there could have been some scratches.
You never know.
And the man purchasing the glasses didn’t realize that the man who was selling them perhaps was telling the truth, that he didn’t see any scratches.
And you can move this further into our own family relationship.
Sometimes we have conflict with our siblings, with our parents, with our friends.
And then you move to the wider world of politics.
Politically, gosh, these wars have got to be about a misunderstanding.
You see me potentially as the aggressor, and I’m the victim.
Poor me.
And this becomes institutionalized.
Money flows in, and we have a mess on our hands.
So if we’re ever going to get past this, we’re going to have to try to understand that my perception, my view of the world is just that.
It is my view of the world.
And you could have a totally different understanding.
And, you know, I live in Taiwan, and many people have never been to Taiwan, but they have a totally different idea of what Taiwan is.
Conversely, when I come to Canada or the United States or Europe, I have a totally different view of Canada, the United States, Europe than many people.
So I always try to remind myself to stand back and really try to understand potentially or possibly what the other person is saying.
The great difficulty, of course, when it comes to views, like political views, is many times there’s also money involved on top of this.
People have a vested interest in actually continuing the conflict.
Like war, for instance, is big business.
Weapons are worth a lot of money.
And obviously, you have to turn over those weapons to be able for the industry to continue.
I was reading that the war business after World War II actually continued on for three to six months after World War II was over.
They continued to make the tanks and the guns and the bombs and the uniforms and God knows what else, because they hadn’t learned yet to stop.
So think to yourself now, the next time you get into some conflict, how am I going to control perception about what is really going on?
And then perhaps the world will learn to settle down and be a slightly better place in the end.
And you know what they say, you know what they say, if you really want to gain some understanding with the other, realize that your perception need not necessarily be the other person’s perspective.
You take care. God bless. Bye-bye.