Finding joy in looking at the world through another's perspective.

I'll never forget the first day in class of my World Religions course in college. The professor told us that if we really wanted to understand another spiritual tradition, the best method was temporarily to set our own religious viewpoint on the shelf, and then to enter into whatever worldview we were studying. I found that when I did this, my mind and heart opened up to completely new ways of looking at life! Since then, I've always reveled in the powerful insights that arise when I look at the world through another's eyes. And this includes not just various spiritual viewpoints, but also those of the different genders, personality types and cultures. For me, this is one of the great joys of life - to see the world through the eyes of another, to experiment with joining the two views together into a single, dual-hued reality, and then to repeat this process with other pairs of perspectives. In light of this experience, I'm always perplexed when I meet someone who DOESN'T like to experiment with looking at life from other perspectives. I wonder what the underlying motivation is for narrowing one's focus and perceiving the world through only one lens? Is it fear?

Photo: Two-toned Chokecherry leaf, with Narrowleaf Cottonwood trees and Arthur's Rock in the background.

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