Different point of view
A Different Point of View Can Be Useful
I am one person. I am a father, I am a son, I am a husband, I am a neighbor. I am a caring member of several groups and I am interested in the future health and vitality of my society.
I am striving to pay attention to what’s going on in my world for a new and different point of view. There is so much that almost anyone could be upset or shocked about some part of it. The talking heads bring events and ideas to us repeatedly, endlessly. They never take a break. The same story may be told and retold many times in a day. I know this retelling is useful for someone who might tune in only at one particular time of the day, but a lot of us listen longer and hear it over and over in the time we listen.
Emotional language can pull at me. This emotional pull keeps me interested since this may be of value for my personal safety, or my group, or family. A long time ago it was useful to may make me aware of some possible danger or let me know my world is all right. We no longer live in such a primative world.
This pulling and pushing doesn’t leave me alone enough to look around and see what is going on that I didn’t notice. Have you ever thought you knew something for sure and then found out differently? I would guess it made all the difference at some point. Something to think about.
One morning a man stood playing his violin in a Washington DC metro station. He played well but he was just some guy and everyone hurriedly moved around him, even avoiding him. What would have been different if they had known that he is the concert master Joshua Bell, who played to a sold out hall in Boston two days earlier with that 3.5 million dollar violin.
Finding out something useful we didn’t expect to find can be rewarding. Anything more interesting, more useful, or really satisfying. The more I learn, the more I find out I don’t know so much really. Looking around to see what others may have of value is a gift I didn’t know about earlier.
I pray that this land of plenty of ours, America, finds the way to understand and work with many points of view that may need more than a simple look. This I feel is our work, worthwhile and not accomplished by being jerked around by the influencers aiming at us on all sides. It could build us a really great future, one we can only begin to imagine.