Today lets talk about perspectives.
They come in all shapes and sizes and are bent, most often, to the view of the observer, as such is the nature of our subjective experience, and yet perspectives are also inherited.
Prejudice and cultural outlooks are shaped, often times, by environment. Our environment, especially in our youth, is largely out of our control.
What is important, as an adult, is to realize that your views may need to be re-examined. This can be scary, of course, if you take a closer look at your religion or faith or another long held belief, but reassure yourself that if what you believe is, to coin an unpopular axiom, an absolute truth, then taking a closer look at that belief should lead you back home to your current belief system.
What we can do, as adults, however, is look at those beliefs or ideas from a different perspective. We can view them through an idealized objective lens or perhaps hold them up to our life experiences and current beliefs.
Perhaps none of your beliefs will change, perhaps all of them will.
Or, more likely, a few will change and a few will remain.
Yet the importance of the exercise is that it expands our mind and teaches us to look at things from other perspectives.
Lastly, look at yourself, but from another perspective.
Perhaps in your younger days you were an athlete or a jock. You acquired the mentality that went with that archetype, but today, are you still that archetype? Have you changed, physically or emotionally?
Think about yourself from a colleague, or even an adversaries perspective?
You will find that you can learn more about yourself.
Without looking at the world and ourselves from different perspectives we are condemned to live a life unobserved, a fate the great philosophers would wish upon no one.
Idea of the day: Look at something from a different perspective.