Perspectives

The above picture is of the same baobab tree along my walking route in the village.  I had to get a new main camera as my tough camera had an electrical problem last year that will cost too much to get fixed-more than I paid for the new camera.  I am still getting used to some of the differences between Olympus shooting modes and Nikon shooting modes.  For example with the Olympus I could set dramatic and it would highlight a color and make it more dramatic.  On the Nikon I choose a color I want it to filter for in the photos.  This is great for those who can see colors and would know what to filter for to get the best picture.  In the end though it is all about perspective.  As an engineer and most science related fields, I think about perspective a lot.  For example how fast something is going is relative to the perspective of my standing still or my being in a moving car traveling in the same direction or even in the other direction.  A bicycle may seem to be moving fast as I stand or walk on the road but in the car it appears to be moving slowly.  The bicycle has not changed speed just my perspective.  

The top photo is my perspective and the lower left is the perspective of the majority of people in the world.  

This applies to almost everything in the world around us.  All the talk of fake news is more often than not about one's political perspective as to which news source you believe.  Again mine is slightly different than the majority as I learned early on that every news article is written with the author's perspective of the subject matter giving bias to what they write.  

Last week something happened that again brought home the value of one's perspective to me.  I was hit by a motorcycle while I was walking to dinner.  I had no broken bones, no blood oozed from my body.  I had a little skin scrape on my wrist and a couple of bruises.  Interestingly enough my belt buckle broke despite their being no impact bruise in that area.  I could only determine it was from the impact energy being dispersed through my body that caused.  In fact I was still standing after the accident, but the motorcycle had gone sliding about 10 feet one way and the driver about 10 feet the other way.  (feel free to insert a fat joke here but I am going to believe it is because I am still a hard$** from my military days)  As I went to see if he was injured I could smell the alcohol several feet away.  Once we got him up and checked for damage he grabbed his motorcycle and took off.  I walked on to dinner and then later walked back to my hotel.  This last week I did my six mile walks every day though about 20 minutes slower than normal due to the bruises on my knees.

I had emailed my parents and told them about the accident and the fact I was ok just bruises.  But my dad put that news through the perspective of how I normally describe personal injuries and assumed I had been seriously injured probably lost an extremity or two.  His perspective assumed I was trying to reassure my mom before she found out the truth of my injuries.  So he told everyone I was injured and I got a lot of emails checking on me and offering to get me home for surgery.  

It really is a matter of perspective in everything we say or write in this world.  Do our perspectives of this world change (our filters of how we perceive things)?  Short Answer is yes.  Long Answer is that we often have to engage things from someone else's viewpoint (walk a mile in their shoes).  In our hurry hurry world where we never take the time to actually listen to what most  people are saying before we form our opinion it is difficult to do.  It is difficult to do even here living in a different lifestyle from that I have when I am home in the USA.  Most of my perspectives were formed while I was in the military at a young age.  They are much harder to change today than they were back then.

As Christians we use the word "empathy" to describe doing this.  

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:24-25
God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. 1 Peter 4:10

Be happy with those who are happy, and weep with those who weep. Romans 12:15

Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important. Galatians 6:2-3