Perspective is a funny thing. I’ve got some extra words laying about on that topic…how about an example to work with?

A. My partner wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex every day.
B. I’m so lucky I get to have sex with my partner every day.
C. I hardly ever get to have sex with my partner. We only manage it about once a day.

The same ‘factual’ information – people who have sex daily – can be heard or understood very differently depending on the perspective of the person delivering the remark, and the person hearing it. The ensuing misunderstandings can create conflict, or rouse an emotional reaction that may not be relevant to the desired discussion. You may have already have reacted to a specific descriptive term, assumption, or implication of the sentences above. The meaning of each is relative to your experience, values, and knowledge.  ‘Right’, ‘wrong’, and ‘true’ get harder to define, for me, when I think about perspective.

Consider example A:
A. My partner wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex every day.
a. My wife wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex with her every day.
a. My husband wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex with him every day.
a. My landlord wants to have sex constantly! I’m having to endure having sex to cover my rent every day.

More information can really change how that sentence feels, and what it means, but it also brings our biases into the mix.  I’m not sure that’s avoidable, because we each have our own ‘point of view’ that has a lot to say about how we see ‘reality’.

Maybe the sex imagery clouds thinking too easily? How about tailgating? This morning I saw a great illustration in commuter traffic.  A bus was pulling into traffic, and has the right of way to do so, locally. A car quickly pulled into the following distance between the bus and the car ahead of the bus in the lane the bus was entering, leaving no following distance, and ‘cutting off’ the bus.  Chances are good, the driver of the car chose to pull into that lane because the choice seemed safe, and necessary.  The bus driver, I can report first hand, did not see things that way at all based on the horn blowing, sudden breaking, and cursing. Traffic continued forward at the same relative average speed as prior to this event, and there was no accident. Is there a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ party? (note: I did not ask ‘Was one driver correct or incorrect according to the traffic laws?) I would be surprised if the motorist or bus driver have recollections that are even remotely similar, if they were asked to relate the morning commute, based on my own experiences with ‘eye witness’ event narratives, and they probably both think they are ‘right’.

…As an odd aside, it has been my experience that some people get agitated, even angry, at the suggestion that ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ could changed by perspective, or individual values and ethics. (It makes some conversations very challenging for me, since I’ve been unable to firmly ascertain a clear, fixed, unchanging system of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to rely on, myself.)  If you find yourself becoming angry with the suggestion that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ may not be concepts of a determinate and infallible nature, please take a minute to chill out and come back when you’ve calmed down; this blog post is not worth being angry about.

Back to the sex… the example sentence really sounds different to me when I take out descriptive or limiting terms.
a. My partner and I have sex daily.
From my perspective that seems the most clear statement inasmuch as it is least complicated, but there is a lot unsaid that would clearly change the meaning for someone hearing it. Definitions of terms become enormously important when descriptive words are removed – the definitions of ‘partner’, and ‘sex’ now become critical to understanding the sentence. Does the speaker mean business partner, romantic partner, or some other sort of partnership, for example? (‘Daily’ is probably pretty clear, but has some room for improvement; does it mean once every 24 hours, or once each calendar day?)

I’ve got perspective on my mind today, because acknowledging the impact of individual perspective and point of view is important to a lot of communication processes, and a lot of people who matter to me are struggling with challenging issues of our times, each sharing their thoughts, ideas, values. There is a lot of emotion involved. Hell, ‘point of view’ is such a big deal it has it’s own porn genre! I’d like to find my way through the turmoil to a better understanding of my life and my world, and my own position on the issues. Issues that confuse me due to failures to define terms and acknowledge perspective right now include:

• gun control – or is that the issue of ‘our failed mental health system’, the issue of mass murders, or the issue of ‘personal freedoms’? (the perspective of a person who owns a firearm and fears the loss of it is quite different than the perspective of the parent of someone who is mentally ill and potentially violent, or the perspective of a victim of gun violence)
• ‘the war on women’ – or is that the issue of pay inequity, or women’s health care, domestic violence, the culture of rape, work:life balance, or domestic spending? (the perspective of a woman making a lower hourly wage than her male colleagues is quite different than the perspective of a man who is the CEO of a thriving business, and the perspective of a woman being stalked by an ex is likely very different than the perspective of a lawmaker hoping to reduce domestic spending)
• the use of drone strikes in military conflicts – or is that the issue of military spending, the issue of defining a ‘combatant’, the issue of expansionism, the issue of cultural freedom, or the issue of the depersonalization of killing? (the perspective of a parent grieving a noncombatant child killed in a drone strike, is different than the perspective of a general hoping to reduce troop casualties)
• birth control – or is that the issue of sexual freedom, health care, family planning, personal freedom, religious freedom, or reproductive freedom? (the perspective of a person committed to an idealogy that opposes pre-marital sex is different than the perspective of someone who chooses to be sexually active and non-monogamous)

So…who gets to be ‘right’? How do you define ‘right’, ‘wrong’, ‘correct’, ‘inappropriate’ or ‘true’?

My thought regarding perspective is that we suffer as people, and as a culture, as soon as we commit ourselves to being – or needing to be – ‘right’. Arguing, seeking to persuade, or pressuring others to accept or acknowledge that we are ‘right’ about something that is not clearly defined nor utterly factual is a fast way to prevent personal growth or new understanding of the world around us. Sharing perspective, as well as ‘facts’ is something I’d like to see more of people doing – and accepting (admittedly the harder piece is really hearing what someone else says about their perspective, when it differs from our own). It sounds pretty simple until  I get hung up on something I think I’m ‘right’ about… and find out, again, how very human I am.

Why does it matter enough to me to write a blog post about it? Because understanding each other is very much about perspective, and I want to understand the things that are important to me, and behave in a way that respects the values and perspective of others, at least enough not to hurt people I care about through careless insensitivity.