Yesterday, a friend visited my blog, and noticed the blog’s headline, “The World As I See It”. He then asked me if I had read Albert Einstein’s book with the same title. I sincerely did not know Einstein wrote such a book, and so, off I went to google it.
I was impressed with the collection of writings by Einstein. His writings showed his thoughts and views on various issues. For one, I never knew Einstein was a pacifist. Reading his writings gave me a chance to look into the mind of the great Einstein.
In case you’re wondering, Albert Einstein is one of the most famous, highly regarded scientists the world has ever known. His theory of relativity and his equation relating energy to the speed of light were sui generis. To the non-science inclined person, Einstein is like the Beethoven of science.
Further surfing of the net showed a few songs with the title “The World As I See It”, and blog posts by different individuals; demonstrating that many of us want to let the world know how we see it, how we think about it.
We are all human, with two eyes each, yet we see things differently. Everyone has a unique perspective to life, to human issues; shaped by various factors, some of which are beyond the control of the individual. It’s like the story of a group of blind men who were taken to a zoo to see an elephant. Each of them touched different parts of the elephant, and so formed a different view of what an elephant was like. Does the elephant look like a snake? A tree? A wall? A rope? It depends on which part of its body you touch.
Understanding the diversities in our human nature is of utmost importance if anything great is to be achieved or if we intend to make progress as a family, a small team, large team, community, country, as humanity. Being united in diversity puts us on a strong footing to mutually beneficial accomplishments.
The problem is that many of us don’t tolerate any view different from ours. We believe our viewpoint to be the only valid one, believing that what we see is the big picture, whereas, oftentimes what we see is a small part of the picture. So many conflicts in the world today could be easily resolved if all the parties involved sit down to say, “This is how I see it, how do you see it?” That way, respect is engendered, everyone’s opinion is considered, and a compromise is arrived at.
The housefly has a compound eye made up of numerous simple eyes. The images from all the eyes is combined to give the fly one image. It’s time we decide, just like the ant, to understand that having numerous lenses doesn’t necessarily mean cut-throat competition. All the lenses working together can give a better bigger picture.
Like the blind men later realized, the elephant is at the same time a snake, a tree and a wall. That’s why it’s an elephant.
Image source: Flickr
Jilomes 