day six: perception
A miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love.
-A Course in Miracles
Did you ever see the optical illusion of the old lady and the young woman? You stare at this image, convinced you’re seeing either one woman or the other, and then all of a sudden it shifts and something you couldn’t see a second before is clear as day. So much of how we feel is determined by our perception, and yet how we perceive things is often not only inaccurate, but inaccurate in disempowering ways that leave us feeling bad. Anais Nin said, We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
A dear friend gave me permission to share the following story.
John was stuck in the past for almost fifty years. He’d been replaying one traumatizing memory in his mind and at workshops over and over and over, attempting to be free and to understand. When he was eight, John’s father died. His mother made the choice to send him to boarding school where they lived in England. She couldn’t bear her grief and the responsibility of two sons. His little brother was too young to go away. The day his mother dropped him off, the giant door closed with a thud and John was alone staring at it. Alone with his grief. No mother. No brother. No father. No family. He was in a strange place where everything was scary and unfamiliar. He heard it and felt it: the giant door closing and the terror of separation.
Then one day deep in meditation, this same scene played out repeatedly—the sound of the door closing and the feeling of being left, over and over—when suddenly something was different. He heard the door close, but he was on the other side. For all the times he’d replayed this scene, this was a side of the door he’d never been on before. It took a moment to realize he was in his mother’s skin. He was seeing things from her side. Feeling them from inside her skin. The grief of losing her great love. Her best friend. Her lover. The pain of watching her son’s tear-stained face. The door closed again but from her side. And then having to walk away, stunned and numb, he felt the crushing agony of her decision, the enormity of her grief—all of it—the pain of leaving her precious little boy.
He had a whole new perspective he’d never had before; this new perspective allowed him to feel compassion for his mother. Instead of upset, confusion and resentment, John was able to forgive her and find peace by understanding the lived experience on the other side of that giant door. She had died a few years before this, but he finally understood that first day at school more completely. And he was able to forgive himself for not seeing it all sooner. The door closed on a painful part of both their pasts.
Forgetting to see another person’s perspective is common for us humans, but it doesn’t just happen on a personal level—it can also happen on a global level. Being born in 1972, I grew up hearing a lot about The Vietnam War. However, it was only this past year while reading a friend’s blog that I learned that in Vietnam they have another name for the war—it’s called The American War. I continue to discover blindspots in my own perspective all the time.
Reflective Journal Prompts
Write about a situation in your life where you haven’t fully considered another person’s perspective.
Write about something that’s happened, or is happening in the world from another perspective.
Discussion Prompts
Ask someone if they ever discovered that their perspective on a situation was incomplete, incorrect or based on a misunderstanding. Ask children, how they imagine their parents or friends feel in any given situation.
Suggested Action
Not everything we see is real or right. Take a look here at some amazing optical illusions.