This past Sunday was Ascension Sunday and during his sermon, the senior pastor at church talked about the Ascension and at one point during the sermon he preached about perspective… which got me thinking. We tend to see the world and interpret what we see from our personal perspective. A perspective that does not see the entire picture, does not know the whole truth.
One of my personal pet peeves is when people say to me: “perspective is reality.” I have a tendency to respond with the following: “while your perspective may be your reality, that doesn’t make it the truth.” Because you see…what you believe to be truth depends on your perspective. All making perspective a merry mess! But not all is lost…as long as we are willing to acknowledge what information we have is incomplete and we are willing to change our perspective when we add new information that fills in our incomplete picture. It is when we choose to be completely closed minded that we get into trouble.
Since I tend to be a stickler for definitions I looked up the word perspective and as I have been saying it is all about the state of our own ideas. And because they are our own ideas…they are incomplete, our picture is not filled in. Mainly because we can’t possibly know everything there is to know about anything. Asking questions and learning all we can about any given situation before we pass judgment (and we should still NOT pass judgment) is important. When we do this we have a better perspective of what is happening around us.
Once we are able to admit we don’t know everything there is to know about a situation we can be a little more compassionate about what people are doing or the choices they make. Notice I said we could be more compassionate. That doesn’t mean we have to agree. I personally believe that anyone is capable of anything given the right set of circumstances. I have been very fortunate to not have been put into a desperate situation where I felt I had to make a desperate choice. I hope I never am.
In the meantime…I will allow my perspective to change as I learn more and understand better.
Peace,
Beth
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