How one perceives things depends on one’s orientation or view. The understanding of a thing is to have full awareness of all its properties. To achieve this, you must have a 360-degree view. Anything less, and you will be operating with limited information; thus, you will not fully comprehend what you are observing.
Most human beings stifle their ability to see the unity amidst the diversity of the world. For example, a person may say I am a New Yorker, because they live in New York. But when one looks at it from a larger view, say from an airplane, one would say I am an American, and from and even further view, like from space, one would say I am an earthling. From this far away view we see the earth as one, and that you are one with it and everything on it.
However, when on earth, you see all the differences in everything and everyone. You do not see yourself as one with the earth and all the other creatures on it. Another example of perception and orientation is when we see a homeless person, or a so-called bum in the street, or a person committing a crime, we assume that the homeless person, bum, or criminal are a disgrace to society. We demand punishment for the person who commits a crime and are intolerant of the homeless or so-called bum in the street.
What we don’t see is the back story of their lives. We don’t know what events occurred in their lives that brought them to this level or state of despair. The homeless person might have had some mental problems or had a catastrophic event in their lives that caused their fall. The person committing a crime might have grown up in a dysfunctional family, never experiencing love, family, and community, the things that makes a person feel whole. The moral of the story is we should always acquire as much information as possible about a person, event, or thing before we make a judgement. The old saying, “try walking in another person’s shoes” before judging them.
