For once, it's cold outside. You can see clouds of white billowing out when you huff out a breath before snuggling down into your scarf, shrugging your shoulders impatiently to hike the straps of your backpack up. If you finish your work quickly enough, you might be able to catch a movie at the union tonight, so just for today you have motivation and focus in spades. Your gaze slides downwards to a business card someone's left behind on the ground, noting the splash of color before you look back up and enter the library.
Blink.
Rotate.
Your legs are cold, your hands are cold, and your face is freezing - you scowl and curse the fact that you rolled out of bed and out the door before checking the weather. You have too many back-to-back classes today to have time to go home and trade your shorts for a pair of jeans, and it's not going to get any warmer today -- you checked the weather ten minutes ago, only three hours too late -- as you spend the rest of you time in the library working on a video project for your Chinese class. As you head up the steps, the toe of your right sneaker slides on a wet piece of paper and crumples it up, pushing you a little off balance. You count that as another thing that's ruining your day and shake your head as you open the doors.
Rotate.
"It's cold," your roommate warned you, coming back from an 8AM class and shivering exaggeratedly. "Take a thick jacket, you'll need it." You sigh at the recollection, rolling your eyes and adjusting the coat draped over your arm. It's not cold at all. It's just seasonably brisk, a perfect counterpoint to the colorful leaves and sparse branches outside, the kind of cold that revitalizes. You take in a deep breath and let it shock your respiratory system before breathing out, relaxing your shoulders when your phone suddenly buzzes in your pocket. Pulling it out and dropping a receipt to the ground in the same motion, you decelerate and stop, reading the message. It's your friend telling you he's on the fifth floor, and you reply quickly with an okay, on my way before shoving the device back in your pocket. You stoop over to pick up your receipt and throw it away before noticing another piece of paper nearby -- it looks like it used to be part of a brochure or something, but it's unrecognizable now, all wet and torn up. Does it say 'Black Swan Yoga,' maybe? Going inside, you deposit them both in the bin labeled 'PAPER' and walk past the front desk in the direction of the elevators.
Blink.
Rotate.
"It's cold," your roommate warned you, coming back from an 8AM class and shivering exaggeratedly. "Take a thick jacket, you'll need it." You sigh at the recollection, rolling your eyes and adjusting the coat draped over your arm. It's not cold at all. It's just seasonably brisk, a perfect counterpoint to the colorful leaves and sparse branches outside, the kind of cold that revitalizes. You take in a deep breath and let it shock your respiratory system before breathing out, relaxing your shoulders when your phone suddenly buzzes in your pocket. Pulling it out and dropping a receipt to the ground in the same motion, you decelerate and stop, reading the message. It's your friend telling you he's on the fifth floor, and you reply quickly with an okay, on my way before shoving the device back in your pocket. You stoop over to pick up your receipt and throw it away before noticing another piece of paper nearby -- it looks like it used to be part of a brochure or something, but it's unrecognizable now, all wet and torn up. Does it say 'Black Swan Yoga,' maybe? Going inside, you deposit them both in the bin labeled 'PAPER' and walk past the front desk in the direction of the elevators.
Blink.
Stop.
ㅎㅎㅎ
Which is it really?
"...one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl..suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place."
The above quotation is from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.[1] While these particular sentences (and the entire book) are comical, the sentiment remains true: if we were just a little nicer to each other, the world would be a happier place. There's no panacea for how we are; human nature doesn't work that way, and we probably wouldn't be able to function if everybody was always nice to each other. (Life would be very boring like that, at any rate.) At the very least though, we could attempt to look at the world through each other's eyes in a less tangible way than trading glasses for a minute. "There is something so much more dynamic and noble if" "you make peace, not war," [2] and all that's needed is the willingness to step away from yourself for a minute. Become "a genuine, first-class misfit," [3] or "a sixteen-year-old graduate of San Jacinto High School." [4] Drop everything that clouds the lens you look at the world through, and let somebody else's situation become yours.
They're both right.
ㅎㅎㅎ
There are "four modes of communication: reading, writing, speaking, and listening." [5] You're utilizing the first form right now, and I'm using the second. The one we use the most in our lives is the fourth; listening, which itself has sub-types. All but one of the forms of listening on the continuum are from one's own perspective, but this last one is the most important: "only the highest [type], empathetic listening, is done within the frame of reference of the other person." [6] Getting into the other person's perspective is understandably the hardest kind of listening for us to perform effectively because most of us haven't been taught how to strip our own prejudices away from how we look at the world. Being able to look at our respective worlds through each other's perspectives is one of the goals that I feel we should strive towards, because society would be a much better place if we could all find a little compassion for one another.
ㅎㅎㅎ
You can probably see the old man without any help, but I know it took me longer to find the kissing couple. I've outlined them below, the man surrounded by blue and the woman by pink.
Who are you?
What kind of person do you think you are?
What unique perspective do you have?
The last question is the most relevant to how we perceive everything and can attempt to look through the eyes of other people, because only by doing so can we truly understand what it's like for another person. Can you really understand what the other person's going through every time you say I get that or I feel you? Probably not, because you're still equating that experience to one of yours. However, that "lack of performance is not the same as a lack of effort," [7] and that lack of effort is all that needs to be eradicated.
I've been trying on different perspectives for a while, whether it was wondering what my life would be like if I had been born a boy or thinking about how different the story of the Chamber of Secrets would have been if it was told from the perspective of a befuddled Hufflepuff [8]. While this is certainly an entertaining way to daydream and pass the time, there are practical applications to this way of thinking. The next time you make a comment, think about who it's affecting. Are you making a blanket statement about a type of people? Could your words potentially be hurtful to others? The next step is to think whether you still want to say them -- and chances are, the answer could turn out to be a 'no.' I'm not trying to lecture or preach; I'll get off the soapbox now. It would just be a much nicer place in the world where everybody would at least make an attempt to think of others. It would allow for us all to experience more than just ourselves, and that in itself would be an amazing thing.
It basically all boils down to this: think (about others) before you speak. Don't just think about them -- think like them. Try to become them for a short moment in time. At the least, it'll be an interesting experience in character, and at the most, you may be harnessing your ability to show and feel actual compassion. All it takes is a little bit of broadening your perspective to be able to see a different big picture. Can you see the old man and the kissing couple? Can you at least try to? Believe me, they're both there.
It basically all boils down to this: think (about others) before you speak. Don't just think about them -- think like them. Try to become them for a short moment in time. At the least, it'll be an interesting experience in character, and at the most, you may be harnessing your ability to show and feel actual compassion. All it takes is a little bit of broadening your perspective to be able to see a different big picture. Can you see the old man and the kissing couple? Can you at least try to? Believe me, they're both there.
You can probably see the old man without any help, but I know it took me longer to find the kissing couple. I've outlined them below, the man surrounded by blue and the woman by pink.
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Word count (without quotations): 1456
Word count (with quotations): 1578
Image credits:
Three or four?: http://www.asbestian.de/blog/uploads/reality.jpg
Boat and land: http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/aG9R9pK_700b_v1.jpg
Old man/kissing couple: http://brisray.com/optill/othis.htm
Sources:
[1] Adams, Douglas. The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. New York: Pocket Books, 19811979.
[2] Course anthology, page 391.
[3] Course anthology, page 363.
[4] Course anthology, page 360.
[5] Course anthology, page 86.
[6] Course anthology, page 87.
[7] Course anthology, page 398.
[8] Rowling, J. K.. Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets. Large print ed. London: Bloomsbury Children's, 2002.
[8] Rowling, J. K.. Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets. Large print ed. London: Bloomsbury Children's, 2002.
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