Perspective
Nov. 4th, 2008 11:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pandora_parrotPerspective is a fascinating thing.
This past Sunday, I had a conversation wherein the other person lauded my adventurous spirit. According to her, I am one of the most active and adventurous people she has ever met. I don't shy from any challenge or obstacle in my path. I go wandering into the wilderness, climbing cliffs and hills and rocks. I'm often leading the pack, pushing everyone around me to explore what's around the next bend in the trail. She celebrated the fact that on a whim we could find ourselves anywhere from the beach to the redwood forest to the middle of a college campus during a gay pride parade.
The day before that, someone lauded me for my energy at Spiral Dance. They thanked me for putting so much energy and vitality into the dance. I think I even managed to start a trend where everyone was jumping up and down while they danced. It was pretty incredible and intense, and I was putting forth tons of energy. I get like that a lot when I'm at a place where there is much dancing going on. I become a wild woman, dancing in a crazy and passionate way.
But then later on Sunday, I ran into someone who has a very different perspective of me. She sees me as a slow and lethargic person. Someone who needs to be dragged on a hike because I am uncomfortable walking on uneven terrain and going to unfamiliar places. I'm inactive and not very into my body.
It really emphasizes how much of the way we describe things is based on our relative perspective of things. We take our known experience as a baseline and describe something relative to that, but we'll often use absolute terms. Like the whole freedom vs. fear thing. People that are trapped deep in fear and often refuse to step too far out of the norm see me as a free spirit without bounds or chains. People that live without fear of the things that I'm afraid of describe me as a deeply frightened individual that is too afraid to do anything. Most of the time, I will describe myself as being free because of how afraid and bound up I know I *used* to be. All of these descriptions are accurate only when they are placed in the context of the perspective of the person making them.
It really makes certain types of communication rather difficult. If I'm trying to describe my life philosophy to you, I will unavoidably use absolute terms to describe relative experiences. What I call "being in the moment" and "living in the now" someone else might describe as "planning carefully for the future and contemplating the past." That's because I've always been so stuck in the future and past that I've ignored the now, and this hypothetical other person may have been living so much in the now that they weren't making any plans or considering the consequences of their actions. We both decide to do the exact same thing: Experience the moment, reflect on the past without clinging, and plan for the future without expectation. But we describe it completely differently.
Again, it makes it difficult to communicate things like life philosophies, personal development, etc. I see this even when I read books by great spiritual leaders. For example, they'll talk about things like "letting go of attachments," but I don't think they mean that in an absolute sense, given the other things I read from that author.
I wonder how to use this observation to improve communication abilities.
This past Sunday, I had a conversation wherein the other person lauded my adventurous spirit. According to her, I am one of the most active and adventurous people she has ever met. I don't shy from any challenge or obstacle in my path. I go wandering into the wilderness, climbing cliffs and hills and rocks. I'm often leading the pack, pushing everyone around me to explore what's around the next bend in the trail. She celebrated the fact that on a whim we could find ourselves anywhere from the beach to the redwood forest to the middle of a college campus during a gay pride parade.
The day before that, someone lauded me for my energy at Spiral Dance. They thanked me for putting so much energy and vitality into the dance. I think I even managed to start a trend where everyone was jumping up and down while they danced. It was pretty incredible and intense, and I was putting forth tons of energy. I get like that a lot when I'm at a place where there is much dancing going on. I become a wild woman, dancing in a crazy and passionate way.
But then later on Sunday, I ran into someone who has a very different perspective of me. She sees me as a slow and lethargic person. Someone who needs to be dragged on a hike because I am uncomfortable walking on uneven terrain and going to unfamiliar places. I'm inactive and not very into my body.
It really emphasizes how much of the way we describe things is based on our relative perspective of things. We take our known experience as a baseline and describe something relative to that, but we'll often use absolute terms. Like the whole freedom vs. fear thing. People that are trapped deep in fear and often refuse to step too far out of the norm see me as a free spirit without bounds or chains. People that live without fear of the things that I'm afraid of describe me as a deeply frightened individual that is too afraid to do anything. Most of the time, I will describe myself as being free because of how afraid and bound up I know I *used* to be. All of these descriptions are accurate only when they are placed in the context of the perspective of the person making them.
It really makes certain types of communication rather difficult. If I'm trying to describe my life philosophy to you, I will unavoidably use absolute terms to describe relative experiences. What I call "being in the moment" and "living in the now" someone else might describe as "planning carefully for the future and contemplating the past." That's because I've always been so stuck in the future and past that I've ignored the now, and this hypothetical other person may have been living so much in the now that they weren't making any plans or considering the consequences of their actions. We both decide to do the exact same thing: Experience the moment, reflect on the past without clinging, and plan for the future without expectation. But we describe it completely differently.
Again, it makes it difficult to communicate things like life philosophies, personal development, etc. I see this even when I read books by great spiritual leaders. For example, they'll talk about things like "letting go of attachments," but I don't think they mean that in an absolute sense, given the other things I read from that author.
I wonder how to use this observation to improve communication abilities.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-04 08:19 pm (UTC)I know exactly what you mean by "being in the moment" and "living in the now". The thing is there is no quantitative way of measuring our lives. We are really the only person we truly know so everything has to be relative. We can only measure qualitatively. I am my only point of reference. My past and my present guides me.
If we take gender, do I feel female? I don't know. I feel like a me. However I know that I prefer others to treat me as female and I prefer fulfilling a female role. Does that make me female I don't know? I have no absolutes to guide me.
In the end I do what makes me feel good. This may mean having fun or fighting for a cause that I believe in. But in the end it is all relative!
no subject
Date: 2008-11-04 08:27 pm (UTC)The only communication strategy this suggests to me is that there is always some common ground to be found between any two people. That was actually what bugged me about the stated definition of The Usual Error -- people are the same, there is always some similarity between two people. It's always there, and it just has to be found before it can be used to talk reasonably about other topics. :\
Every now and then I get a sick urge to write about an Unusual error, the error of assuming you don't have something in common with another person. But, maybe I'm misinterpreting.
Dunno. *hugs* But at least you see that not everybody's going to percieve you the same way, simply out of their different backgrounds. Takes a long time for some people to figure that out, truly.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-04 09:54 pm (UTC)Deep down, I see you as a very bright person and a spirit that pushes to be free and it's not easy to communicate that without common terms and experiences and what not. I know that knowledgeably I know this about you and I think about this part of you on a meta-informational level, but we've never talked about it directly. I could see how direction of approaching you from a totally different environment where I didn't have a high-level view... I probably would see you that way. And when we first met, I didn't really have that. ^_^'' That and the brightness of your energy was disturbingly bright for me.
no subject
Date: 2008-11-05 05:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-05 08:20 am (UTC)