The True Measure

Perspective can be a huge part of the true measure of our sense of reality.

There is a family living on a mountainside in the Himalayas. 

It was a summer evening. The family of five was huddled around a burning fire that was the stove on the dirt floor of this one room shack that was also the kitchen, the dining area and just barely feet away from what would be their communal bedroom for the cold night ahead. That one room shack was the size of one's kitchen in a typical studio apartment in LA.  It stood a lonely vigil on a cliff where the next door neighbor was a kilometer away, uphill.

The two boys were practicing their ABCs  while their older sister was helping their mom cook. As the mother was stirring with a wooden ladle, her daughter was gradually scooping corn grits from a container into the pot. Soon the corn got to the consistency of a thick porridge, like oatmeal. Now, all five, when the father joined them, ate that one-course dinner with their hands; with last minute scrambled eggs.  They will be well rested for the night. The fire was the only source of heat and light.  Every now and then the mother or father will wake up to add more firewood to keep the fire going until morning.

Earlier that day the wife was taking a handful of corn from a makeshift storage as several chickens and ducks were milling around her, waiting for her to  shuck the corn to feed them. Shortly, she fed the one pig that was in a nearby pen. What they had that evening was  essentially the same food the chickens and the ducks ate.

Their life viewed from the perspective of the modern world is abysmally at the lowest edge of poverty. From that family's perspective their life is just fine; clearly not in the same way someone from New York would define as subsistence living.  

Meanwhile, somewhere in Paris, another family of five was dining on a three course meal, excluding hot soup and fresh salad, with fine silverware and porcelain plates and white linen napkins for each.  All had dessert afterwards, except for the mom who chose not to. There was ample lighting from the chandelier over the dining table while the entire household was bathed in strategically located lamps and air was circulated at an even 74 degrees F. 

That family views their life as middle class. Both mom and dad think there is room to move further up the social ladder; deservedly so, they believed, just like those moms and dads who take their kids to school in late model Mercedes Benzes and BMWs that glistened among a line of ordinary Citroens and VWs.

The Parisian family's views  of reality for the most part are relative to something. Something else, other than where and how they were situated. That is the kind of perspective they see of their lives. The Himalayan family had very little to compare their lives with people halfway across the world. Their perspective  is the only reality they know, so completely alien to  the Parisians' view of the world. Nothing profound about that but it has a philosophical attribute to make one see reality a little differently.

Is perspective then the true measure of reality? Abstractly or philosophically, it seems yes.  However, if by some unearthly phenomenon the situations were switched, in the above example, the Parisian family will not survive the harsh realities of the Himalayan mountainside in a few days. The Himalayan family will fare better physically but in the end the emotional toll and psychological burden of adaptation to the big city will get the best of them. That thought supposition is neither here nor there, of course, if not as an extreme example of an abrupt alteration of reality to influence perspective.  

How about a gradual alteration of reality?  We can all relate to that, can't we?

Growing up in one of the central islands in the Pacific, one of millions of the first of the baby boomers to be born, I was one of a family of six. Even by the living standard of those times, "dirt poor" was what little perspective I had of my small world. It was one where the snack after school was leftover cold rice and granulated brown sugar (the cheapest kind from the bottom rung of the  sugar refining process).  My perspective of the world was confined to that island.  If the baby boom phenomenon was nature's way of filling a vacuum after the war, we were gasping for air all throughout our childhood. That was the perspective of  malnourished kids who somehow survived despite the glaring absence of basic health and dental care.

Decades later, having lived in the U.S. now for far longer than I and a family of my own had ever lived in anywhere else halfway across from that Pacific archipelago, my perspective of reality has changed; just a lot less drastic as the example above but it was  some kind of phenomenon indeed, nevertheless. Though not quite so unearthly, if at all.  

For where I and my family are now, the distance from  that island life would seem like light years away.  I am eternally grateful to God for all the blessings that accompanied our life's journey that seemed so impossible to contemplate but became a reality for a kid whose perspective of the future in the 50s was in black and white compared to the Technicolor life from the movies he watched growing up.  That is an amusing  view now but back then, as a young kid, all I saw of the few photos taken of us were all in grainy black and white but all the magazines we read of the U.S., including those on Christmas cards, were all in color.  

Perspectives. It was all upon which we framed our realities of the world. 

The Himalayan family had very simple perspectives. There was no argument about the husband coming home late. There were no late business dinners or bars open in the wee hours of the morning.  Besides, the husband had to be home by sundown because there were no street lights to illuminate his path  and the distinct risk of falling off a ravine was a potentially life-ending predicament. There was no need to have two tubes of toothpaste in one bathroom because one spouse "squeezes it wrong".  They never argued all through the night over a movie plot or how it should have ended. The two realities of the families  were framed by perspectives that are so foreign from each other as if they do not belong to the same species or to be living in the same century.  

Perspectives change but they are part of the bases of our individual realities, so what are we to do with those that are no longer relevant? We need to  allow  them to live on and take up residence in our memory - archived for easy access. Why?  It is best to have them around because as sure as there is tomorrow, our situations can change without a moment's notice.  Perspectives of our past realities are what will keep us grounded to the new reality.

Our perspective when money was tight or life was difficult overall will always prove handy when situations change. On the other hand, our perspective during happier times will provide the kind of buoyancy to keep us above water when faced with the rushing current of new challenges. Perspectives are like vaccines we've come to develop along with an ever changing environment.  

We tip generously those who provided us service because we remember so well the generosity we received when and where we needed it out of the kindness of other people. 

Finally, perspective can both be a problem or a solution. It becomes a problem when one insists on his or her own perspective alone to the exclusion of any other.  It could become a solution when one manages to view a problem from the perspective of the other.  Indeed, if we keep an archive of our perspectives the better and easier for us to react and adapt to the changing realities of life.