The Power of Our Perspective

Let's consider the word perspective. We heard people say oh that's your perspective or from that perspective I can see that. Perspective is just that, the way you see things. The way you see things depends on your current state of mind. I can just hear some of your thoughts right here, speaking of your state of mind. Consider this; a man is in the woods after 3 days of deer hunting without seeing any deer. He can turn a tree into a trophy 10 point buck. His perspective is that he has come into the woods to find and take a trophy buck. His mind is set. His anticipation is I have planned all year to hunt and find the big one. By the end of the third unsuccessful day, every group of tangled tree limbs turns into a trophy rack that he can hang on the wall of his den. His mind is so intent on seeing what he wants that it literally skews his perception. It does not affect his eye sight. It affects what he perceives from what he sees. That is the power of perception. It is the filter that takes the input of our senses and draws conclusions from the sensory input. Perception takes raw data and interprets into something useful, something helpful to us. We could put a starving man in the same woods looking at the same tangled tree limbs and he would turn the shapes into food shapes. His perspective affected the conclusions his mind came up with from the raw data that came to him through his eyes. Remember Jesus said the eyes are the window of the soul.

Think about the story of the three blind men and the elephant. These three guys all were touching different parts of the same elephant and coming to vastly different conclusions. The one blind guy based on his sensory input said, oh elephants are kind of like snakes long and thin with hair on one end. He was handling the tail. To this the other guy replied, what are you crazy everyone knows that elephants are round and thick kind of like a tree. He was touching the elephant's leg. The other blind guy just shook his head in disbelief, boy those guys are really missing it, my perspective is that elephants are kind of like stingrays large, flat and skinny. He was touching the elephant's ear. The truth is that if these three guys would have taken their collective perceptions they would have had a more accurate description of an elephant.

We should take lessons from these examples and understand how we come to certain conclusions and to begin to value what one another is saying. If we only listen to those who agree with us we will be skewed in our perceptions. Submitting ourselves to a variety of outlooks enhances our perception. It makes us question our position and then go through the process of weighing out why we believe what we believe. The problem so many of us have is our beliefs are shallow and fragile. They won't stand the test of the scrutiny of other view points. So we hide amongst those who agree with us and say yep we got it right all those others are wrong. We remain like the blind guys feeling only one part of the whole and being deceived into believing that what we are 'seeing ' is all there is. Begin to recognize our perspective is just that, our perspective. There are other perspectives out there. If we listen to others we may 'see' a bigger picture. Bless you as you move forward seeing all that God has for you. Mitch