THE OBJECTIVE VIEWPOINT

                        

       One day I was watering my neighbor’s yard while he was away on vacation when my attention was suddenly drawn to the cement block fence that separated our properties.  During the eighteen years that he and I had lived side by side, I had looked at that fence countless times, but at that particular moment it seemed to be different.  Viewing it from my side, the fence was extremely tall—perhaps eight feet or more—but from my neighbor’s side it was scarcely five feet tall.

      I laughed at my momentary puzzlement as I realized that I was seeing the fence from a different perspective than usual.  My neighbor’s yard is at the beginning of a slope and mine is further down on the incline. When the fence was first constructed it was six feet high on both sides of our lots, but my neighbor had filled the low side of his yard to be level with the high side.  That cut the visible height of his fence to five feet, whereas there had been a two-foot retaining wall added on my side to accommodate the sloping terrain, thereby making it eight feet high.

     That little moment of awareness caused me to speculate as to how my neighbor and I would each describe our fence to a third party.  He would say the fence is five feet tall and I would say it is eight feet tall, and we would both be telling the truth as we see it from our different perspectives.

     How easy it is then for people to be at variances with each other in viewing life, and how much conflict and strife can ensue from “one-sided” vision.  Therefore, for harmony and fair play to exist in a relationship with another person, each one needs to be willing to see both sides of any given situation, as the conditions that exist on one side may be totally different than that on the other side. Example: in regards to the afore-mentioned fence, both my neighbor and I would have been only half correct had we described our fence from our particular perspective of it.  In reality the fence is eight feet tall on my side and five feet tall on his.

      Different cultures, religious beliefs, financial and social status, all influence our values and approaches to life, creating a different perspective for one person relative to that of another and making it difficult for people to be totally objective with each other.  Even in one’s own family, there are personality differences in the members. One child may conform and meekly accept the rules and standards of his parents as his own, and that will be his side of the family “fence.” But, another child may rebel against those standards and assert his right to think for himself.  In that case he places himself on the opposite side of the family “fence,” and establishes a conflict of viewpoints between him/her and the parents, as well as the other siblings who may have conformed

       Once a person has a concept of right in his mind (either by conforming or rebelling to the pressures exerted against him), his sense of self-worth tends to be dependent on asserting and defending his viewpoint against those who disagree with him. Therefore, he becomes biased in favor of whatever lifestyle and viewpoint he has accepted and loses his ability to be totally objective.

     This gives rise to a “survival-of-the ego” pride-oriented environment, wherein people compete to have the dominant role over someone else. As such, the prideful individual does not seek objectivity, fair play and equal opportunity for each person to express his/her individuality and slant on life, but seeks instead to uphold their one-sided viewpoint.

      How then can a harmonious, loving society come into being with all the participants defending themselves as being totally right?  It can’t, but it can come into being if people are willing to become objective and seen both sides of every situation.  Once he takes a look at the other side of his fellowman’s “fence” he can see life as the other person sees it and understand why that person thinks and acts the way he does.

      Understanding then removes prejudice and bias and brings forth patience for other people’s perspective on life, thereby affording the individual AN OBJECTIVE VIEWPOINT

BEING TRUE TO MYSELF

                                                 


      
                                 
     In my childhood environment, conformity to the governing rules of my family was the only way to win acceptance and a “good girl” pat on the head.  But, I did not agree with everything in their culture and lifestyle, so I resentfully and rebelliously took a stand against accepting it as my own.  Because of that, my parents, grandparents and other relatives spent a lot of time scolding and shaming me to bring me into conformity to their way of thinking and acting.

      My only sibling, an older brother, had conformed to those rules, so he also tried to tear me down from my superior-acting rebellious perch by showing his contempt for me. He did so by simply sticking out his tongue and making an ugly face at me, or pinching me when no one was looking.  I stood my ground with him by making a more ugly face back at him, jabbing my sharp little elbows into his ribs or kicking him in the shins. That usually sent him crying to our mother, who, not realizing that he had provoked me into defending myself, would comfort him and paddle me.
 

      Because of my rebellious attitude I also attracted a lot of hassling from my classmates at school, and with my tendency to physically fight back, I endured a lot of degrading punishment from my teachers.  (In those days the unruly kids were spanked in front of the whole class or made to sit in the corner wearing a dunce cap.)
 

      As I grew older the humiliation and degradation I received began to erode my self-esteem, so that by my mid-teens I had lost so much confidence in myself that I began to see myself as others saw me—I was a bad kid.  Once I accepted that negative self-image to be my own, my pride was hurt and I started to mentally beat up on myself with self-condemnation and degradation.
 

      It was as though my parents, grandparents, teachers and any authority that had ever humiliated me had somehow gained entrance to my consciousness and were then doing it to me from the inside. (I later learned that their degrading actions towards me carried the covert suggestion that I was bad, and because I had resented it, the negative emotion allowed the suggestion to remain in my mind and hypnotically influence me to see myself as being bad.)
 

      Because of seeing myself in that negative light, I no longer had the confidence to keep on rebelling.  So, I conformed and began to cater to my mother, teachers and other authorities in my life for the feedback of being praised and accepted by them.  But, I did so as a defeated warrior and not out of true love or respect for them.  They sensed the hypocrisy in me and then withheld the praise I was seeking from them; justifying their action by finding further fault with me.
 

      Regardless of whether I rebelled or conformed, I seemed to always end up as the loser in my relationships, and so I continued to feel rejected for the greater part of my life.  The emotional pain I felt from being so rejected finally moved me to seek a better understanding of what was basically wrong with me that was preventing me from being loved and accepted by others. By digging deeply into my consciousness and sincerely wanting to know the truth, I began to “see” myself from an objective viewpoint; and in doing so I gained the understanding of what had gone wrong in my life.
 

     Because I had been so degraded and humiliated as a child, my self-image had been altered so that I saw myself as being a bad person.  To upgrade my image I had conformed to the dictates of my parents, relatives and teachers—the very ones that undermined it in the first place. In order to conform though, I had to sacrifice my self-hood and individuality, which created a lot of guilt in me.
 

       Once I understood what I had done wrong and was truly sorry for it I stopped the mental degradation that was undermining my self-esteem, and in doing so I regained my confidence and self-respect.  So now I can relate to those who try to downgrade me without resenting them, or myself, if I fail to deal with them perfectly. In that regard,  I CAN THEN REMAIN TRUE TO MYSELF.

     As Shakespeare put it: “To thine own self be true, and it follows as night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”