Perspective

Perspective. It's an interesting thing isn't it and something that I, for one, don't really stop to consider. Life just gets so busy that it's easy to just take things at face value, but not looking at a situation or individual properly could mean we get a really skewed view.

I recently wrote a post about thinking and acting more thoughtfully, if you missed it, you can catch up here. That post was a reminder to myself as much as anything, to show more kindness and be willing to help people in my community more. I don't want to be someone who just walks past a person in need.


Is it enough though? I'm not sure it is, because not all needs are visible, some are hidden (and some better than others). If you see someone crying or shouting, you know there's a problem, but some people don't openly show their emotions, some people are masters of disguise, you wouldn't even know there is a need.

Situations arise all the time in our schools, workplaces, families, friendships etc, when people get the wrong end of the stick, as it were, and end up falling out. We've all done it, it's just one of those silly human flaws that we all have, but if we just take the time to sit back, think and try to look at it from a different perspective, can we avoid these situations?

Well, maybe not entirely, let's face it, if it were that easy there would be World Peace and we'd all be living the dream, which we clearly, are not. However, there are indeed two sides to every story and taking the time to think about that other side, might just help us to resolve the problem, or offer a helping hand.

That person, who was horribly blunt to you might actually not be a heartless, cold  human being.

They may look cool, calm, confident and self assured on the outside, whilst on the inside they feel hopeless, scared and anxious; the point is we don't know what is going on in someone else's head.

That person who is the life and soul of the party, who happily chats away to anyone and everyone, who goes out of their way to help their friends, once the front door is closed, they may be desperately lonely, but you don't see it. They might drop the odd subtle hint, but they don't want to burden you with their problems, so they won't tell you outright. You probably won't have a clue with these people that anything is wrong at all, which is why it's so important to change perspective if they suddenly act out of character. Your natural instinct will likely be to take offence, or be shocked or disappointed, but please, stop and think, why is my friend suddenly behaving so differently, do they need my help? And if they do, then TALK (Thoughtfully Act with Love and Kindness).

We're all different (which is a good thing, how boring would the world be if we were all carbon copies of one another), so there will always be challenges, but if we remember to TALK and really look after one another in our highs and lows, maybe we can make our own little corners of the world a little happier.