Perspective

The importance of perspective was once again brought home to me today in a dramatic manner. But let me go back a little. Some time back I read a story in the Readers' Digest in which the author narrates an incident that happened to him. He was travelling by train in the city and when the train stopped at a station a man and his three young kids got in. The father sat next to the author and the kids in different seats. After the train started again the kids started moving around and generally making a nuisance of themselves, people started frowning and casting disapproving looks at the father. The author too sat there and wondered why the father was not making any attempts to subdue his children and was thinking all manner of unkind thoughts about the family. Finally he turned to him and gently pointed out that his children needed a bit of control. Upon which the young man replied 'We are just coming from the hospital where their mother died of cancer and they don't know what to do with themselves, actually even I don't know what to do with myself'. Instant transformation in perspective.

I have a colleague called Mark who sits a few meters away from me and sometime last week he came for a discussion with my neighbouring workmates. Every one else spoke softly but Mark has a loud voice and since the discussion was long I started getting disturbed by the loudness of his voice. I even considered going up to him and asking him to keep his voice low. Fortunately, I didn't. Today I had the ask Mark something and when he was passing my my table, I called out to him and asked him if he got the emails that I had sent. He couldn't catch what I was saying and I thought he couldn't understand my accent. So I repeated my question in the same tone but a bit slowly, he still couldn't catch it and came closer and said that I will have to speak up a bit since I had a soft voice. So I repeated my question this time in a louder voice. He came even closer and turned his ear towards me and for the first time I noticed that he was wearing a hearing aid. Light bulb moment. Aahh ! So that he why he was speaking loudly the other day, almost all people with hearing problems tend to raise their voice. I must say my attitude towards Mark changed dramatically.