I have been fortunate enough to know and work with hundreds of people in my life. I’ve worked with musicians, actors, writers, activists, young women, philanthropists, entrepreneurs and executives. I’ve worked with indigenous people in remote communities and with urbanites to collectively achieve goals in cities. I’ve worked with enough different types of people to recognise that what you do in your life is of little significance to your life, how you see it is entirely what is making up the quality of your life. Even in my own family I see the difference between a positive, trusting attitude and a suspicious attitude and how the latter can have virtual crippling effects on one’s life if left unchecked.
When we walk the earth expecting people to bring us down, expecting bad things to happen, expecting to be cheated, expecting to hate our jobs – we bring about all of that. We make it a reality. Expecting bad does absolutely nothing to affect change, expecting bad but knowing a productive transforming response can neutralize bad faster than you can learn to play the penny whistle.
Knowing this has landed me in the midst of many conflicts as a mediator. In any conflict you are not dealing with just a situation – you are dealing with a situation with two (or more) perspectives. Perspectives are neither right nor wrong. Saying a perspective is wrong is like saying you’re listening to that piece of music incorrectly, or tasting that new meal wrong. Perspectives just are. They are grown from birth. There is a complexity in perspective so unique and experience based that only the individual themselves have the ability to truly understand the pathology of their own perspective.
The good news in all of this is that once you realise you have a perspective that is based on how you have thought and felt your entire life, and not necessarily based on facts or truth and that your perspective is colouring virtually every experience you have, you can start letting go of some of it. You can start seeing that you have nothing to lose by letting go of it. You can start seeing how you fit in the world amongst everyone’s perspective. And for me, what I’ve found is that you can suddenly and spontaneously forgive everyone for having their own perspective.
Right at this very moment; we need the entire world to forgive each other for how our brains work and start looking at the common goals we need to work towards, regardless of our perspective.
It’s simple – life on earth as we know it is at risk. We have a commonality amongst us. THAT is the most important perspective to have and that is something we need to come together on quickly.
Wishing you a week of meaningful insights.