Perspective is a lovely hand to hold.

There is a lyric in a Relient K song called "Part of It", from which the title of this blog is derived. The lyric may look simplistic in nature, but the concept is much more complex than it appears. The song tells us, "if a nightmare ever unfolds, perspective is a lovely hand to hold."

Now, I'm sure if I asked someone if they knew what perspective meant, they would be able to tell me fairly easily. It is defined as, "a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view." We all know this, and to a degree, are all conscious of our own perspectives.

A good way of testing perspective in different people is to have them all look at the exact same object, or the even the same paragraph. Then have each person describe what they see, or what they understood about the paragraph they read. What you will find, without fail, is that people bring themselves into everything; If everyone looks at the same sunrise, it has the potential to mean something completely different to every single person watching it.

People bring in past experiences, current situations they are in the midst of, their mood, their physical state, etc. All of these things can affect our perception of the things around us. A person from California will feel (much) differently about 65 degree weather than a native of Chicago who will hardly blink at the bi-polar nature of Chicago's abrupt temperature changes. 

Or take Broadway Revue, a student led performance of a collection of songs from different popular musicals put on at Olivet a few weeks ago; the reception was fantastic, but no two people could have possibly had all of the same thoughts about every single song performed that night. It would be impossible.

So, upon discussing perspective with my roommate this, the last day before fall break, I have come to the conclusion that everyone sees through a different lens; yes, people see similar things, but because everyone is unique and each of us have a different past, different experiences, and different personalities, we have created our own lenses. When we look at things, it is almost as if we are shining the beam of light that is our unique perspective upon the situation; we all have differently colored lenses, or maybe the differences are slighter and are merely the position we look at the situation from. Regardless, no one looks at everything and understands what another sees perfectly: we simply do not have the same perspectives.

What's the point? Why do you keep emphasizing this, Dave? I get it!

Good! you understand that everyone has different perspectives, and that makes for different conclusions on the same subject. This is my point: why would you look at a, situation, person, dilemma, object, sunrise, play, sport, concept from just one perspective? If we all shine our perspectives on different parts of the same thing, like lights illuminating an object in the dark wouldn't we see it much more clearly? Why would we insist on using but one feeble, flawed flashlight? When it comes to the great and small questions of life wouldn't it be smart to try and shed as much light as possible on the situation?

They say two heads are better than one, how about two lights are brighter than one? Search out perspectives that are different, or even similar to your own, and you can only be gaining greater perspective on the situation.

Trying to take my own advice,

-Dave