Ibonio D’ Souza
We humans are capable of thinking thoughts only one after the other, and not have several thoughts at the same time. This limitation often leads us to look at things or people with one single perspective. So when we are dealing with a situation or thought or another person, we tend to see only what is obvious to us, not realising that everything in this Universe has multiple sides and aspects to it. If we were able to literally tilt our heads, and have a different view or perspective of everything, we would have a more rounded view of life and would automatically become less judgmental and upset, and more loving and accepting.
If the behavior of the other person suits us, if it sits well with our belief systems and conditionings, we call it good and it makes us happy. Whereas if the behaviour is contrary to our expectations, comfort zone, our belief systems, we label it as bad or unwanted. In all such circumstances, what we actually need to do, is to try and see if there can be a different explanation, a different point of view, for the behaviour. We need to become empathetic, and move into that person’s shoes, to see why he or she behaved in a particular manner. When we stick to our perspective, we become unidimensional, and we land up with more judgments, anger, hatred, irritation, frustrations, jealousy and grief.
Consider our earth which is a globe. It is impossible for us to see it from any one angle and conclude about its totality. When we are focused on one part of our world, like the United States of America, we cannot obviously see the continent of Australia..and so on. The point being we cannot inspect the world from any one angle or perspective and come to a conclusion. We obviously need a global view.
In the same vein, when dealing with daily life, with events, with people, with our successes and failures, it is easy to see things in a particular manner, in a particular view, which is often dictated by how that event affects us and by our conditionings. But in order to get full information, we need to move our thoughts and vision around, and examine the event or person or behaviour completely enough.
When faced with situations, we must try and take a global or complete or a different view, rather than trying to have a narrow tunnel vision. It is obvious that even when we meet someone, we can see that person’s face, but cannot see his/her back at the same time. If we shift behind that person, we can see the back but we lose sight of the face. To see the person totally, we would constantly have to keep moving around him and changing our opinions about him. Likewise, we need to constantly be gathering, editing and updating our information about people and events, so as to get the complete picture and complete truth, rather than to stand in one place and get only one fixed, partial view of situations, people and human behaviour. Everything in this Universe is dynamic and constantly changing... and that makes it necessary for our opinions and perspectives to also be constantly changing to live life as realistically as possible.