A Lighthouse for Personal Growth

Perspective

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aliasesHow can I appreciate myself and others more?

Root Love > Instinct > Self-aware

Perspective

Definition

👁️‍🗨️-📝

In the program, perspective is your understanding on how to view the world. While your view matters, it’s also quite limited, and the fact that you have a perspective is not unique. There are other people who exist in the world besides you, which means there are at least two perspectives: the subjective and the objective. It introduces the idea that you must not only form your own unique view, but you must learn to live with other people’s view, too. Shifting perspectives is a way to know yourself and empathize with others.

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^def

Moral You are special, and so is everyone else.

Mnemonic

  1. A single eye is easily blinded.
  2. You are not the only ship sailing the ocean.

Illustrative Story Mr. Jackson’s Story Ms. Ahlmer’s Story

Learning Points

  1. How can I be more understanding?
  2. How do I know what is true for me?
  3. Why don’t people believe my opinion?
  4. How do I know what the real truth is?

1. How can I be more understanding?

Remember to center yourself on the idea that you know nothing. If you want to refresh yourself, this is part of the Orientation on “Nothing”.

Being more understanding requires more gathering more information. You don’t understand something because the concept isn’t whole in your mind. If you want to understand history, you study history. However, history is told by the victor. We don’t want to be misinformed, so to avoid learning a tainted version of history from only one perspective, we should strive to hear the same story from different angles. Listen to the losers of a war as much as the winners because there are at least two sides to every story. Sometimes, seeing the big picture is figuring out what the sides aren’t saying rather than what they are.

1.1 Frame of Reference

Seeing things from different viewpoints is called changing your frame of reference or perspective. Our point of view is indeed unique, but it exists alongside a vast pool of other unique perspectives. In addition, our awareness of what we sense and what we know is very limited. If you read The Holographic Prize, you will remember that humans see only 0.0035% of the spectrum of light in the universe. If this is true, and our other senses are similarly limited, it would be amazingly arrogant for anyone to know that they know anything.

By seeing something from the eyes of another person, we become that person. It’s almost as if we are watching a movie with an actor, and we become part of their character. We adopt their problems and feel their emotions as our own. This is called empathy, and it is a vital tool for helping us live with others.

Empathy the ability to sense other people’s feelings with compassion

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^empathy

1.1.1 The Cylinder

To clearly demonstrate this, we’ll use a metaphor. Let’s take a look at this illustration.

Cylinder

Captionator

Original concept author unknown; illustrated by Teacher Kelly To be more understanding, use empathy to change your frame of reference.

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  • In your own words, explain what is happening in the illustration.
  • Think of a time in your life when this could have been useful to know.
    • If you had to live that situation again, how could you improve the outcome?
1.1.2 Monkey and Fish

One of the best ways to change your frame of reference is to listen. Listen to yourself in those quite times of reflection, and listen to others when things aren’t working in the relationship. Don’t interrupt, don’t be overpowering, but be gentle in your approach and honest by saying that you want to learn more about what they experience. This helps build respect not only for others, but for yourself. If you cannot respect yourself, how can you respect others?

Alan Watts, who passed away in 1973, is one of my favorite modern-day philosophers. What we will do now is use his parable as an example of what not to do. Originally, it was meant to show how having good intentions to help can cause harm instead. Here, we want to use it as a metaphor for a frame of reference.

Monkey and Fish

Imagine a fish swimming happily in a creek and a monkey sitting calmly in a tree above. The monkey notices the fish, and immediately rushes down the tree and into the creek.

The monkey says, “Kindly let me help you, or you will drown”.

The monkey scoops up the fish and puts it “safely” in the tree.

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See how the intention was great, but the monkey couldn’t not picture things from the fish’s frame of reference? That proves less helpful and more disastrous for the fish. Imagine the monkey’s distraught when the fish passes out because it couldn’t breathe. If the monkey new how to view the larger picture of how the environment works, the tragedy could have been prevented.

Let’s learn how the monkey could improve its behavior by looking at this from a different point of view.

1.1.3 The Details

When we try to understand others, it can be hard to see the big idea when troubled by details. This was the monkey’s problem, and this next world-famous analogy suggests that sometimes we don’t recognize things when we are looking too closely at them. It symbolizes a tree as a detail of a problem and a forest as the problem itself.

Analogy Forest for the Trees

Picture yourself as the monkey. You see the fish swimming below you as you sit in your tree, and you panic. For you, the fish looks like it’s drowning in the water.

Now, get out of this mess of details, you have to “zoom out” your frame of reference because you are zoomed in too close to (or too focused on) the problem. You can try using someone else’s perspective! How about seeing things from the fish’s point of view? In this metaphor, placing yourself outside the forest is a good way to see that the forest is made of trees. On other words, elevating your view focuses more on the problem, less on the details.

#3 Quote

Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.

— Mary Torrans Lathrap, 1895

This is another popular way to say you should use your empathy to understand a person’s situation. When you take on a frame of reference, spend a good deal of time in their shoes before abandoning them again. Feel that person’s emotions, see their circumstances, and understand their limitations. When you do this, you become more understanding.

  • Place yourself in the monkey’s frame of reference. Why did it want to save the fish from drowning?
  • Now, place yourself in the fish’s perspective. Is the fish safe in the tree?
  • Suppose the monkey could go about the situation a different way. What could it do to improve the outcome?

Take a moment to think about this yourself before you reveal my “One Opinion” explanation below.

1.2 How do I change frame of reference?

You must use your imagination. Your ability to make a world with your mind is one of the most important. In the above content of this lesson, you must imagine yourself as the woman or man, the fish or the monkey. Perhaps you don’t know what it’s like for certain to be a fish, but you can use your background knowledge to make a good attempt at it. You can even add fantastic details that don’t match the real world, such as talking monkeys. In doing this, you are creating a frame of reference with access to the senses of the fish, the monkey, or whatever else you imagine.

Let’s practice making your frame of reference larger and larger, until you can see the whole planet.

  • First, start with where you are. Really pay attention to your senses.
  • Next, use your imagination to create a new viewpoint. Let’s call it a camera.
  • Imagine the camera is looking down on where you are now. It’s only a few hand lengths above you now. Imagine the top of your head and the immediate environment around you.
  • Now, imagine the camera is at the ceiling of the room you are in now. What does that look like?
  • Zoom out even further by going through the roof of the building. The camera is now looking down on the entire structure.
    • This is where the imagination really kicks into overdrive. You may have never seen the top of your building, but you can imagine. The farther you zoom out, the less details you see. That’s natural!
  • Keep going. What if the camera is now positioned over your neighborhood? Your country? Half of Earth?
  • Now picture all of Earth. The camera is now able to orbit around the Earth and see it from all angles.
  • Imagine, if you were a being that had this view, what would you think of the people on Earth?

This zoom out method is great at looking less at the details and more at the subject in general, like the forest analogy. When you take this view, the details become trivial, the pains become temporary, and you realize that this is just one moment in time. No matter how large a problem gets, it’s still a dot on the timeline of a lifetime. You start to realize that the suffering we endure is loud but short. Life becomes more bearable afterwards.

1.3 Moral

Be more understanding by being open to people’s problems. Mutual respect is what makes communities thrive. The world is not built only for you to impose your will and enjoy your time. Surviving isn’t easy, and helping only yourself makes it harder. Show you care by taking the time to understand the people around you, and provide what help you can—but only if they need help. When you are helpful, you are respected, and you build favor, goodwill, and trust. You never know when you will need help. Other people will stand in line to help you, even if you only helped them once.

2. How do I know what is true for me?

Knowing your own subjective truth is a matter of listening to your preferences. Ask yourself the questions, and you will discern the answers yourself. This is best done when you are alone and when distractions are removed so that you can Listen to Silence. A private reality will develop naturally.

#2 Concept

Private Reality: every belief, opinion, and practice that is true for you

It’s your set of beliefs and opinions. It’s the landscape or environment through which you experience life. Sometimes, your opinions might match with someone else’s, but what makes you special is the combination of all your beliefs and opinions. Your private reality is your own, and no one shares exactly the same one.

Info

Every single person, every private reality, is only one way to live life.

2.1 Actor vs. Character

In order to illustrate this concept, let’s use the the subjective and objective views and place them into the context of an actor. Any actor takes on the role of a character in a book, movie, video game, and so on.

Let’s begin the next exercise where you are an actor playing a character. Keep the following things in mind:

  • Your character has a viewpoint that is different than yours. You know things that the character doesn’t, such as the plot of the story and the character’s fate. You might sense things that the character wouldn’t. You might smell a distracting fragrance that isn’t present in the storyline, for instance.
    • What about the reverse?
  • Stories have main characters and supporting characters.
    • What it look like if the supporting characters were also main characters and vice versa?

Now, you are ready for your role! Let’s use our captain theme here. You are a captain sailing a large sailboat in the late 1400s. You run a crew of about 80 people, and your main mission is exploration. Consider these questions:

  • How does your private reality as the actor differ from the character’s?
  • In what ways are you playing as a background character?
  • In what ways are you playing the main character?
  • What new information can you get by being a captain hero who uses empathy?
  • What problems could surface if you force your crew to participate in your own beliefs or accept your own opinions?

2.2 Moral

Ask yourself what is true, and listen to your answers. Don’t avoid being alone because silence, solitude, and concentration are needed for these answers to come. Each of us have our own private universe in our minds. Sometimes, we don’t accept reality for what it is, so we wrongly project how we think it should be. What we project is our private reality, a world that we create in our minds.

3. Why don’t people believe my opinion?

This question is centered around the desire to make people fit neatly into your private reality. It’s like a grab for control, to imprint your reality onto everyone else’s. For example, if you are trying to convince someone that being respectful is better than being disrespectful, it may not work for a few reasons that are based on various contexts. While it may appear obvious to you, it may not be for others. Therefore, we should never assume something is obvious.

3.1 Contexts

Context is key. Everyone is on a different path of life. People have varying backgrounds, hardships, and mindsets. Paths are not linear, either, which means that some people start at number five and their next step might be number ten. All this to say that we never know at which stage of life someone is positioned.

3.1.1 Preference and Intent

First, it’s likely that their private reality holds a different preference. Perhaps they like speaking what is on their mind without regard to respect for others.

Second, maybe their intent is good. They think that they are indeed being respectful by saying what they feel is the truth, even if the way they say it is harsh. If you haven’t already, take a look at the Monkey and Fish analogy to see how good intentions can be harmful.

#4 Quote

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

— Proverb, circa 1150

People live through their private realities. They have boundaries to behaviors they will accept and reject. They have preferences to what they like and dislike. They have opinions and beliefs that their own. They have intentions that are probably good, but they come across abrasive. No one will instantly abandon any of these things because someone presents a different opinion.

3.1.2 Shared Reality

Of course, other people cannot live by what you believe. Countless people with their own private realities are in a confined space limited by what is real. This is what is known as the shared reality.

#3 Concept

Shared Reality: the real world in which everyone and everything lives

Everything in the private reality is filtered and reduced by the shared reality. In our minds, anything is possible. In reality, possibility is limited—at least as far as we know. Remember, we know nothing for certain. However, there’s no proof yet that humans can do something crazy, like fly or live forever.

Because the shared reality is limited, what actually happens in real life must follow all of the rules dictated by our reality. For example, humans don’t have wings, so we just can’t fly. However, if we use technology to help us fly, then that satisfies the rules of reality.

3.1.3 Control

With love in my words, this topic question sounds like an attempt at control. This should not be a worry for you because what people believe is irrelevant to you. Their private reality is private. It isn’t your job to tell people they are wrong and/or try to correct them unless you are their mentor or authority figure (more on that in the moral). Let them believe what they want, and despite your efforts, most will never instantly adopt your opinion, even after a thorough debate with factual evidence.

Info

The seed may be planted, but if you dig it up, it will never take root.

All you can do is find your satisfaction in planting a seed in their mind, and let life circumstances determine its fate. If you try to force your opinion, it’s like digging up the seed you already planted. Leave it be, and let it grow.

3.1.4 Terms & Meaning

We should also clarify what our terms mean. Language is ambiguous because people have their own ideas for the definitions of words. Instead of assuming that you and another person are operating on the same understanding of vocabulary terms, it’s a good idea to clarify definitions, especially when there seems to be confusion in the interaction.

3.2 Readiness

Since paths aren’t linear, we never know where a person stands in their life journey. Sometimes, a person is faced with a concept or issue they’re not quite prepared to handle. If they don’t manage their needs and problems well, they may never be ready. Facing these problems with a closed mind may actually be uncomfortable for them because our brain likes to work efficiently. When it senses things in the shared reality, it creates an idea of what is normal, safe, and comfortable. It creates a sense of stability in the world and a genuine peace in their heart, called equilibrium. The brain likes to feel like it maintains some sort of control over reality—but it doesn’t! When that balance is upset, it feels like they have no agency in an ever-changing world.

#4 Concept

Equilibrium: a person’s sense of the stability and order of the shared reality

This makes learning information that is contradictory to their beliefs uncomfortable. They feel it shatters their private world too much, they feel a loss of control, and the world becomes more chaotic—it can be scary for them. To save themselves, they deny the new information.

However, if a person is accustomed to processing hard truths because they understand they know nothing, they become more open to information that stands in opposition to their private reality.

3.2.1 Four Captains

What we will do now is engage in an exercise that demonstrates how people aren’t ready to believe in an opinion, or even a fact. Try shifting your frame of reference around to clearly understand the feelings of each captain.

  • Imagine there are four ships each with one captain, and you are one of them.
  • The ships are within shouting distance of each other in the middle of the ocean.
  • Each ship is facing a different direction. Your ship faces north, and the other ships face east, west, and south.
  • The other three captains report seeing only ocean in their directions, but you see land that is far away.
  • You report that you see land in your direction, but each captain says something different.
    • “Nonsense, there’s no land on the map in that direction,” says William.
    • “No, three out of four of us see only ocean, so you are wrong,” says Richard.
    • “You should follow what I see because I am the most experienced captain here,” says Arthur.
  • Now, let’s analyze the situation:
    • Consider each captain’s frame of reference before moving to the next points.
    • What happens if the other captains took your viewpoint by simply looking to the north?
    • How does this idea about a shared reality apply to situations where you receive new information you never thought of?
    • Have you ever insisted that your answer is the only correct answer?

When new information threatens the brain’s equilibrium, an uncomfortable feeling happens in a person, called cognitive dissonance. That feeling describes a world that is different than how a person believed, whether it’s regarding their comfortable concept of the shared reality (their equilibrium) or how reality doesn’t match their private one. They feel vulnerable, fragile, and afraid as a result. They feel they have no control over anything, and that’s their mistake in two ways.

#5 Concept

Cognitive Dissonance: the physical discomfort a person feels when new information doesn’t match their private reality

The first way is a false sense of control: they never had control in the first place. They only believed so. The second way is that at any given moment, a person does have control over one thing. It’s not their emotions, but their choices. When a person learns they may choose how to react, a new world of possibilities presents itself.

3.3 Moral

Let go of the false sense of control. The same way you wouldn’t want to be forced to believe a lie, others don’t want to be told what to believe. The world is different than our private reality. Everyone wants the shared reality to match their private one, but that can’t happen. We have to learn to live with each other in a reality that doesn’t choose favorites. Plant the seed, and let them decide whether or not it gets nurtured.

Leadership is noble. Being someone’s mentor or authority figure should garner their respect, and what you do with that is important. Do you hold them to higher standards than what you follow, or do you lead by your own example? Whatever you choose to deliver should be filtered through the lens of your private realty. Don’t impose your private reality, but work with what is common and decent in the shared reality. Your guidance as a mentor/authority should be given with the foresight of grace.

4. How do I know what the real truth is?

You can’t! No one will know the whole truth. As long as we are part of the experiment of life, we cannot know the truth that composes life. However, that doesn’t mean there is no point in trying because, as we learn more, the truth comes closer. It will be in the last place we check.

In this section, let me show you why truth is so elusive.


4.1 Characters Never See

Now, let’s revisit the idea that you are playing a character in a movie. Let’s match that character to the captain theme that we have. Here, we will pose the following questions:

  • Will your captain character ever see the movie set?
  • Will they know that what they are saying are scripted lines that someone else wrote for them?
  • Would they ever learn that their real suffering is a fake drama for the entertainment of uncountable and unseen people?
  • Would they appreciate the intrusion of an audience on their most private moments?

You should be starting to understand how to use the frame of reference by now. Imagine yourself as the captain. Turn those questions around on yourself. Can you now see why the whole truth is hidden? You are the character in your own movie, but who is the actor taking on your role?

#5 Quote

Be careful what you wish for; it just might come true.

— Greek folklore

The alternative would be to know. What if you did know the whole truth? What adventure is left to discover? What new mystery would present itself? Here is where we need to be more careful because the adventure is in the journey, not in the discovery. Imagine you skipped the journey only to arrive at the destination. Now, you have the treasure, but you can’t appreciate it anymore because you sacrificed nothing to get it. It means nothing because it cost nothing.

In the Greek folklore of King Midas, the king wanted everything he touched to be turned to gold. He was granted the wish, but he quickly regretted making it. He discovered that he couldn’t eat or drink because his touch, even with only his lips, turned it all to gold. His wish turned into his curse.

Remember, though, leave room for doubt. Don’t let the idea of skipping the journey for the destination or the story of the Midas Touch convince you that there is no alternative. We don’t know anything for sure. While it’s a good idea to take things into consideration, keep your mind open for any possibility.

4.2 Unknowable

Since we’ve learned about the subjective perspective, we can’t finish this lesson without looking closer at its opposite: the objective perspective. Remember, the objective truth is the bigger picture: seeing the cylinder instead of the orange square or blue circle; seeing the forest instead of the trees; seeing the land on the ocean when the maps are wrong.

This is an asymptote:

  • Look at the line graph below. It is an asymptote, a mathematical idea that describes a line forever halving the distance to another line.

Captionator

Rod Pierce An asymptote

If what you believe is true for you, and what I believe is true for me, who is right? What is true?

  • Think of the numbers 13 and 0.
  • Suppose the number 13 is what we believe is true, and the number 0 is the real truth.
  • It’s clear 13 does not equal 0. To make 13 closer to 0, let’s divide it by 2: 6.5. Great! We are closer, but let’s get closer still!
  • Divide by half until you get 0.

After doing just a few calculations, it becomes clear that we will never reach 0. This is a demonstration that shows that we can get closer to the truth forever but never reach it. It seems like the more attention we give truth, the more complex it gets. It’s as if we start at the bottom of a tree, where the trunk is the first truth. As we climb, we discover more branches of the truth. The truth gets exponentially larger with every discovery. I believe this is what makes looking for the truth so interesting. Being wrong is not just a failure; it’s getting one step closer to truth.

4.2.1 Truth as a Pet Rabbit

If the math and asymptote demonstration is difficult to understand, consider the pet rabbit analogy. The rabbit symbolizes the whole truth, and the owner of the pet symbolizes you. The forest in the story symbolizes the journey of life.

#3 Analogy

Truth is like a pet rabbit that you lost in the forest. The forest is its home now. You will never catch it again, but you will find signs of it everywhere.

When you are little, the pet rabbit is yours. You love the pet, you see the pet every day, but you don’t think to ask what the pet is. It’s clear (obvious): it’s a rabbit, the truth.

Captionator

flip-h Christopher Paul High The truth is a rabbit in disguise!

When you get older, you take your pet rabbit with you outside to the forest nearby your house. You want your pet to see the world.

The pet sees the world, and runs away. You lose your pet rabbit in the forest. You want your pet rabbit back, so you will look in the forest for the rabbit. You will find pieces of the rabbit’s fur (hair), and you will say, “The rabbit was here.” Therefore, you keep looking in this direction.

Then, you see the rabbit in the distance, so you get excited. You try to get closer to the rabbit without scaring it, but when you get close to touching it, the rabbit runs away again. This happens many times, but you never catch the rabbit.

4.3 Moral

Humans will never know the whole truth because we are part of the living experiment of life. This is exactly why characters will never know they are in a movie, video game, or story. Characters may never see the actor’s world, yet that world does exist.

You see pieces of the truth all around you, but you never get the whole truth. Despite this, you want to know more. You look, you learn, and you get close to one piece of truth. After a time, you understand that piece. However, you start asking new questions, and suddenly, a new truth briefly appears and quickly disappears. As a result, you start looking for that truth in a never-ending cycle.

The search for truth isn’t hopeless because it isn’t about obtaining the whole truth. You hold on to what you have, what is true for the moment until something truer shows itself. It’s a slow process that teaches you to enjoy the journey, being wrong, and surprises. The pursuit truth shouldn’t be viewed as a destination to reach, but an adventure to enjoy.

Extend the Lesson

2026-07-09 18:06