TM Vidhya Nagaraj

By TM Vidhya Nagaraj

The word ‘perspective’ meant to see things, objects, situations and events in life from a particular view point or mindset. The dictionary meaning of the word perspective is 1) the appearance of viewed objects with regard to their relative position, distance from the viewer, etc.. 2) a particular attitude towards or way of regarding something; a point of view.
So how does one develop a particular view of things around them. We develop perspective over things, life, incidents, events or situation from our family, education, environment, religion, culture through our formative years in life and later through certain life experiences.
As adults we start looking at things and our response to most situations in life depends on our lens of perspective that we wear and see through in life.
This perspective is one of the guiding factors in decision making and how we react and respond to various people, situations and circumstances.
Does perspective become a hinderance? Yes if we are looking at things from one view alone. This is beautifully explained by . Novelist Chimamanda Adichie in the Ted Talk – ‘The danger of a single story’. Chimamanda explains how when we look at things from one perspective along- we tend to become stereotype and judgemental. We tend to miss out learning or understanding things from 360 degree. She explains how looking at things from our frame of perspective that we are wearing robs us of opening our horizon and we miss out on learning something new in life.
So how can we develop a growing and changing perspective? We can change our perspective by being open about everything around us and being open to new learning, experience and awareness.
Recently I read the book, ‘The pearl that broke its shell’ by Nadia Hashimi. The book is set in Afghanistan and protagonist in the book Rahima- struggles for basic rights such as dignity, education and freedom to live a childhood (which she is robbed of). From my perspective, Rahima had to go through the ordeal because of her religion, culture and societal norms. Few days ago I read the book, ‘Uneducated’ by Tara Westover, the book is a memoir of her life. The protagonist Tara is born and raised in America, just like Rahima, Tara too had exactly same challenges and issues in life.
Reading this book made me understand how I was wrong about culture and religion. The two books despite being set in different society, culture, religion and socio-cultural backgrounds, yet had same issues and challenges!
This has made me shift my thinking and opinion.
So the next time you are faced with a situation , circumstances, incidents in life stop looking at it from dimension and look at it from different dimensions.