Today I got an email with a image attached to it. There was nothing in the mail - just an image attached. I cursed my friend who sent it witout mentioning why he has sent it and what I am supposed to do with it. Out of curiosity I opened the image. The picture was pretty simple. It looked like a vase. It didn't make any sense to me. I was expecting it to be something interesting. Why would someone send such a boring image. I ignored it and bought myself a hot Cappuccino (btw I was in office). I dont know if it is the effect of cappuccino but I opened the image again and looked at it for a long minute. I couldn't find anything special. The vase looked a bit distorted but I thought my mind is playing tricks on me. I cursed my friend again and not willing to ask him what it is, I farwarded that mail to few of my friends to see what happens. No one replied.
The topic popped up again at lunch time. I was surprised to hear that some of them could only see two dark faces facing each other, many of us saw a single vase in the centre of the image. We all ended up arguing. Well, we all gathered around my laptop to check it out again. I said "see, it is a vase". My friend standing next me shouted into my ear "NO! see the faces there!!". Using his forefinger as pointer he showed us where the faces were. Yes, it was there. I could now see the faces staring at each other. I was shocked now, the faces were so prominent now. They were prominent more than the vase itself. I have to struggle to see the vase now. I showed others where the vase was. I found it dificult to show them the vase, for some reason they were not able to see it. But I was sure (I can see it) it was there.Finally everyone could see bothe faces and vase in the image.
This whole incidnt made me think. Thoughts started to come and go. This explains why we end up arguing, why the other persom not get what we are saying, why few people always fight.
We just assume what we see, do or know is the truth. We never try to understand the other persons' view point. As in the case of the image, I was 100% sure that there was a vase. I argued that it was a vase. My friend was also sure that he saw two faces. If we accept that it is only our perspective and try to understand other persons persective of the happenings, we wont be having many problems.
One interesting thing about perspective is that it changes with experiance. once you have a new perspective of life, it is near impossible to go back. As in the above case, once I got the new experiance (of the faces inside the image), it was hard for me to see the vase. As your experiances in life grows you will have many perspectives of it. With many perspecives one can relate to any other person easily. That is why people with experiance (which depends on time, deeds, and relationships) seems to understand you better than others.
Does it mean I have to wait till I get older to understand others?
No. You just have to accept the fact that there may be other perspecivies. This is improtant as this allows us to listen to others. If we listen to the otehr person we get to know his perspective. We can better tackle the problem together.
We will have our perspective on everything. We will have a perspective on job, role, organisation, object, place, food, attitude, culture etc. We all have our perspecive on enything and everything. And it is not bad. We just have to acept that it is our perspective and respect others perspectives.
Lets listen to all those who care for us and all those who we care.
Cheers.
Vijay
