My vision is blurry without my glasses or contacts. My hearing is poor without the assistance of hearing aids. Basically I’m a hot mess without corrective lenses or volume control.
Thankfully there are products that help me see and hear better. I don’t have to walk around blind and deaf all the time. Not all of us are in need of corrective lenses or hearing aids. Yet we can still be walking around figuratively deaf and blind. As the realities of racial injustice have been given more awareness, realizing how much I do not know has left me feeling as if I’ve been walking around deaf and blind. As I watch, listen and read the words of black authors, as I read more about our countries history I realize how much I have never thought about. Never noticed. I have realized how much lack of information has formed my perspective. How often have my personal experiences formed perspectives, and I simply move on? Never coming back later to take time to revisit, reflect, or rediscover, adjusting my original perspective or finding a new one.
Perspective is defined as a particular attitude toward or a way of regarding something. A particular point of view. Most of the time our perspective is formed from our experiences in life, what we’ve been taught, what we’ve learned. My younger son tends to like to stick to what he is comfortable with, what he knows. New experiences can stress him out, create anxiety. So one day as we’re talking through how he’s feeling about a particular situation he says “I don’t have as much experience as you do, I don’t know everything that you know and not knowing makes me scared.” Seriously never underestimate the wisdom of words coming from a child.
Ever wonder why people get defensive when their perspective is challenged? Sometimes it’s just because people like to argue. But often it simply comes down to FEAR. When situations are outside of our experience. When we’ve formed an opinion that we are comfortable with. Having our perspective or opinions challenged is scary. A natural reaction to cover fear can be to allow it expressed as anger.
So how do we adjust our perspective?
It’s can be as simple as adding to our experiences. Rather than allowing ourselves to remain attached to our already formed perspective on a situation, new experiences help expand our thinking.
We can see ourselves as a life long learner, intentionally seeking out resources that may differ from our standard topics and continue to expand our knowledge.
We can ask questions of others with differing opinions. Become comfortable building friendships with people who don’t always agree with us on every topic. It’s so easy to get to a place in life where we’ve formed our ideals and made up our minds. It’s so easy to be fearful of what we don’t understand. We might not even recognize that fear is what drives our responses.
We can take time to reflect on situations and experiences. Reflection helps us to think about how we are living out what we know.
Did you know that the idea of reflection came from a theorist named John Dewey (1859-1952)? His proposed view was that reflection is described as persistent, active thinking. Taking into consideration the supporting evidence that forms knowledge to the given situation.
Knowledge is important. But if we simply stop with gaining knowledge nothing necessarily changes.
We must take time to reflect on that knowledge.
Racial Injustice, Pandemic Life, Politics on all these topics and more let’s take some time to gain knowledge. Then take some more time for reflection. Let’s recognize we are all coming from different places with different perspectives.
Let’s find ourselves some corrective lenses and hearing devices so we aren’t walking around deaf and blind.
