A Different View

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Politics

How often do you change your fixed perception of a situation in a significant way?

 

It happened to me a number of years ago when I saw the musical Wicked for the first time. It was literally life changing.

There is a well established, pretty universally accepted "norm" and it is shattered. Never looked at The Wizard of Oz the same again.


Witch & Dorothy

 

Recently, I had a similar experience with the film, "I, Tonya." To see things from her perspective, very enlightening.

Sonia sent me a copy of a letter (fiction) from the Baroness Schraeder about her cancelled nuptials to Captain Von Trapp. Another POV, very illuminating and humorous.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago a regular "blogger commenter" whom I always seem to be at odds with, was very helpful to another blogger. Without naming names its hard to explain how profoundly positively this affected me, but it did.

These days in particular, as my wife recently said to me when I was complaining about how different I was from the others in a group, "perhaps you would be better served to think about your similarities rather than your differences."

Slowly but surely I am learning compassion and that is a necessary gift in 2018.

 

Share our similarities, celebrate our differences. - M. Scott Peck

Comments

Corey Bearak

The best among us -- including you evolve (continue to grow) every day!
Fred Klein

Someone once said to Lincoln that he seemed to be able to read minds and he responded that he just had a sense of empathy.

Submitted by SoniaSaleh on Wed, 01/17/2018 - 00:16

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Sonia Saleh

Beautifully honest and open. It’s something we can all learn.

Submitted by Liz_Saldana on Wed, 01/17/2018 - 03:36

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Liz Saldana

Beautifully stated. There are multiple sides to every story and every person. Sometimes it's just a matter of looking at it/them from another perspective.
Rona Gura

Beautiful blog. The profoundly positive paragraph made me smile. I got it.
Cayce Crown

Hoped you would. It was kind of amazing how the shift can happen. You are a compassion facilitator.
Cayce Crown

Thanks, Liz. Realizing that there is another POV is the first step. Who would question the Wizard of Oz? :)

Submitted by AnnaMariaVona on Wed, 01/17/2018 - 05:02

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Anna Maria Vona

I, too, agree with your beautiful and heartfelt comments. Whoever penned Wicked must have had a universal concept to share with us other humans. It made me think differently as well and enabled me to have more compassion to consider another's perspective and life's journey.

I am a huge fan of This Is Us, because the show's writers completely turned the paradigm of accepted TV narratives. The show seamlessly toggles back and forth between several set points in the past and the present and give us really good insight about the motivations of the characters and how their respective life events shaped their characters.

The writing seems more like a novel for its precise insights than any other TV show or movie I have ever viewed.

The casting of This Is Us is truly amazing, as the child actors look so much like the adult character actors. Because This Is Us resonates so completely with me, when I am out and about, I play games with myself and try to picture how an older person would have looked when they were younger and also try to imagine what a young person will look like when older. It is a fascinating social experiment and will never fail to keep you occupied if you are waiting for someone or something on the street or in a car.

Thank you for sharing your insightful perspective and comments; I think you may have changed the paradigm for many fellow Gothamites today.
Gideon Schein

Well said Cayce. It seems that this is a lesson we seem to learn as we grow older.

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