The Remote Control

Do me, yourself, your neighbor a favor.  Pick up your TV remote control and hold it out in front of you.  Pretend I’m sitting in front of you listening.  Pretend I’ve never seen a remote control before and I have no clue what it is or what it’s used for.  Sitting there, I’m curious and ask you to describe it to me.  Most people would describe a TV remote as a wand-like stick, 5-9” long, 2” wide, often black, with lots of buttons.  Some buttons have colors.  Some have numbers.  Some have symbols.  Each button performs a function to control a TV.

What if I looked at you and said, “You’re crazy? Where did you possibly come up with that description?”  You, in turn, perplexed, might think I’ve flipped.  You might argue your point tooth and nail and I might deny it with as much ferocity.  You might get more and more frustrated, and we might part ways fuming because of our silly disagreement.  So what happened? 

If you hold your remote out in front of you, likely, you’ll hold it facing you.  While it’s facing you, you can see buttons, but what do I see?  I see a black wand with nothing else but maybe what looks like an outline for a battery compartment.  The truth is, we’d both be right and we’d both be wrong because neither of us had a complete picture of what we are looking at. 

This is called perspective.  And perspective affects every aspect of our lives.  It’s crucial to understanding the world around us, to formulating ideas, to taking a position on an issue.  But the problem, as with this illustration, is that all of us are always a little bit right and a little bit wrong because we can only see reality from our own perspective.  The key to solving that problem is listening, sharing, and taking turns sharing our perspectives and seeking truth in each. 

If we, as humanity, could slow down, listen more, take time to evaluate and learn to work together, maybe we’d understand each other better.  Maybe we’d understand the problems that face us better.  Maybe we could come up with creative solutions that we can all accept.  I have a feeling we are more alike in our interests and hopes for life than we are different, but sometimes we see how to get those interests filled differently.  And that’s ok.  So what if we decided that compromise is acceptable as long as it fulfills those interests?  What if we saw past our own limited perspective to see the bigger picture?  What if cooperation was the goal?  What then would the end result be?  I can dream can’t I?