Creative Guidance-IASbaba, Inspirational & Educative Articles
Perspective
It is said that the total weight of ants on our planet is more than the combined weight of all the human beings put together. We are pretty sure that a lot of ants disagree to the so called accepted fact that we human beings are the most dominant species on earth!
Sometimes it helps to put things in perspective.
Let us take an example from Malcolm Gladwell’s book BLINK to understand the importance and the impact of perspective. If you take a sheet of paper and fold it 50 times, how high do you think the stack of folded paper will be? Your best guess can be the size of a matchbox, the size of a refrigerator, or if you stretch your imagination a little more, may be the size of a building. But in reality, the height of the folded paper will approximate the distance between the earth and the sun. You fold it one more time and the distance will be doubled.
We have a difficulty understanding geometric progression. We think and structure our world around us arithmetically; hence anything that does not follow the rule of slow gradual change, skips our consciousness and robs us of our sense of perspective. This is tremendously important for individuals who are applying their thought process to accomplish something.
It is impossible to think linearly. Each and every thought of ours is connected to a million others and one single thought has the potential to change our entire lives. We can intellectually organize our life linearly in terms of days, weeks and months but living it is a dynamic, exponential process.
Just think about it, what all can you do with a single glass of water. Spend some time thinking about it, you will be amazed with the answers you can come up with. The object of writing this article is to bring home the point that each and every activity that is happening around you and within you has far reaching consequences, far more than you can ever imagine.
Everything around you is growing, evolving and changing exponentially. Your environment, population, governments, laws, customs, habits and lifestyles are all changing multi dimensionally. The best way to understand what is happening around you is by becoming a part of this dynamic process.
You cannot grow if you remain linear and independent of the dynamic system that is around you. Just imagine if a plant says – First I will grow tall, later I will grow my roots and leaves, and then I will handle photosynthesis which seems to be a complicated process!
Your process of living is no different from the process of growing. Each and every moment you are living, learning, growing, changing and evolving. If you can align yourself to this vibrant complex process and accept that everything has to happen simultaneously, you will be free.
And this is where perspective becomes tremendously important. The system around you is so complex and so dynamic that unless you learn to put things in perspective, you will end up looking like an extinct dinosaur fossil; always serious and out of place. Sway in the wind, shudder in the rain, glow in the sun and grow under it. Learn to accept things with ease and humility. You are nothing more than a simple, tiny, conscious, evolving earthling. Even your greatest of problem is pale when you put it in perspective with some of the things happening around you. By the way, ants still outweigh us!
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