I stumbled across this video early yesterday and thought it was wonderful. The message that we could be that much more balanced if we made the effort to see other people’s perspectives and stop trying to frame them within a context of our own expectations, stop cherry picking the bits we like and ignoring the bits we don’t. This world is not black and white, it is so many shades of grey, and if we could step away from our own preconceived notions and have the openness to experience new perspectives we might understand each other, and therefore ourselves, just that little bit more.
I’ve always loved the saying that “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, is the very definition of insanity” and yet, in daily life, so many try to fit recurring personal expectations into everything new, and are unwittingly setting up for repeated failure.
I think to truly be open to new things, we have to be able to let go of our own expectations and allow ourselves to see the values that don’t match our own, rather than try to change them to conform. We need to accept the fact that we are just as fallible as the next person, that we aren’t somehow better or worse because of education, intelligence, abilities. I always think it’s a bit sad that so many have the need to compare themselves against some model, have the need to assess a sense of place against that of others, have a need to achieve so much so that they can think of themself as “just that little bit better”. I also think it’s sad that we spend so much time focusing on how everything affects us that we forget to think about how we affect other people, how our words and actions, or inactions, can make things worse rather than better.
Sometimes when we think we understand and we try to empathize, we aren’t really understanding because we are too busy making assumptions that we are the one with the “right answer”, that we know how to “fix” things. The person we are trying to empathize with is obviously therefore “not right” or “needs fixing”. Obviously the other person needs to change somehow to meet our expectations of what would make make things work “better”, or for them to reach some new “level”, based on a different, possibly faulty, set of assumptions and biases.
I like how the narrator highlights the fact that humans are famous for trying to fit old ideas, ones they won’t let go of, into a new context, and that it doesn’t usually work. It’s hard to let go of control and certainty, what little most of us have. As he says, (paraphrased) we can ignore it and plow along, or choose to acknowledge that current perspectives aren’t working. It takes humility to put aside our own biases and assumptions, to put aside the need to control, to try and force things work the way we want them to, to listen to a different perspective and manage to empathize, but doing so will surprise you because you will wonder why you hadn’t seen such a simple logical way of thinking before. By shifting our thinking and our point of view, putting ourself in the other person’s shoes and try to see our own failings, and how those have impacted those around us, it can provide a resonance, a better understanding of people and place, and it can change the meaning of perspective. (He started to sound a little crazy there for a bit – with the whole ‘resonance’ thing, but I’ll go with it, because we all experience things differently.)
I agree that we are infatuated with creativity, innovation, transformation, – our own usually – but, being too obsessed with the ideas we hold close means we get stuck, we miss the big picture because we become too obsessed with our own ideals and forget the validity of those of others. That much I totally agree with him on.