Change of perspective
July 9th
I, like most people, exist in a place defined by the location of my home, work, and places where I fulfill my needs, be it shopping for things or places where I relax, or where my loved ones live. I am also defined by a group of people I see and interact with every day. I know those people so well, that I can predict how they will react or respond to me and my questions and to my words. It’s normal, useful and quite boring.
Then they are new places I visit, where even the drabness and their dirty reality is interesting because It’s new and not the one I see every day. And there are people I know and love, who I visit and talk to only every few months. But this period of not being in close touch doesn’t matter when we see each other and conversation starts without a hitch exactly where we left off the last time.
That is extremely important to me. I hear and understand things anew, not from the common point of view of my every day closed circle interactions. From a different person and a different location which I don’t see every day, I cannot expect the predictability of what surrounds me within my well-defined borders of local and my internal parochialism. The newness of a different perspective, either from someone I see only once in a while or from a new place I visit, is stimulation that keeps my mind working and creating and analyzing new ideas and stimuli.
There is a whole wide world out there, for me to explore and learn from. It also keeps me from stagnation in the stereotypes already created in my mind. It keeps me growing.
