Trying to look at things through another's eyes

 

Subject: Trying to look at things through another's eyes.

Reading across a wide spectrum of opinion one comes up against opinions from the right and left each claiming an absolute truth. Given there is no such thing as absolute truth one has to wonder at the consistency of people who hold such disparate views and insist only theirs is the truth.

If black is white in someone's eye and visa versa to the guy standing next to him, how can our views be so different given we live more or less in the same environment. What is it that strikes a cord in one person and makes the next person want to throw up.

Our back ground and the potty training we received plays a part. The difference in our emotional state for instance which makes one person a depressive whilst another is full of optimism. There is so much that defines us, that marks us like cattle on market day each person jostling for position, each keen to show off his of her profile, each intent on leaving an impression. Do we try to live with an honest appraisal of who we are or do we buy into the story we put about to influence and impress others.

People from all corners of the earth have their own story to tell but how much time do we give to understand them. Do we always try to fit people into the self image we have of what is right and proper unable to imagine the life and the cultural constraints of people from other cultures so different from our own. It's only the close proximity that globalisation has forced upon us which makes us reach for an understanding of the man in the seat next to us. Have we all become passengers in the bus to nowhere, strangers on a journey which has no end, bathed in incomprehension as we forget our roots and become uncomprehending  sightseers.

Once the fields and a distant signpost pointing to a place we would probably never visit was enough, the animals in the field and the crops which produced  the food on your table and the people you knew from childhood was enough information you needed to form an opinion, you were happy in the here but now.  The world of just over the horizon makes us all travellers, uncomfortable until we have been there and tried peering through the looking glass only to see the Mad Hatter at his equally mad tea party.