Perspective is everything, right?
Well, maybe not everything.
But, isn’t it obvious how important it is?
Do we not realize that the world would burn if all minds thought alike?
As a motorcycle lover…it’s the equivalent of being stuck in the same rut that everyone else uses. A restricted line that expedites the process, but keeps you from getting to the finish line your own way.
The bad thing about ruts is that once they get too used, too deep, too walled-off it actually slows you down. And inevitably, new lines start to get made.
Faster routes. Smoother lines. Freedom.
Look…
Would I be typing this — and you reading it — if only one life view ever existed?
Diverse perspectives, opinions, and perceptions are arguably the only reason we’ve made it here:
The butting of heads creates the best possible human existence.
Because without it, the human experience would come down to a simple(and currently threatening) and oppressive reality:
Tyrannical dictatorship. King among slaves. Shepherd and sheep. Predator among prey. The superior and the inferior.
I’m not saying there aren’t levels of this today. It’s a complex and super gray area because of national differences, cultures, and constitutions.
All I’m saying is a world without voices, without democracy, and/or republic truth leads to an inevitable end.
…
Before I started writing I lived in a completely different world.
I lived behind the veil.
I saw the world (and myself) as others told me to.
I didn’t have my own opinions. Not expressive ones anyway. I didn’t decide on life based on my intuition or instinct, I decided based on what other people said was right, or smart, or safe.
To be honest I lived in kind of a naive bliss.
I was the type of “in shape” that was just short of a competitive bodybuilder. I was confident because I had a well-paying job, a house, and a sweet Galaxy Blue(not purple) colored car.
What was there to worry about?
But avoidance, even if we’re unaware we are doing it, still leads us to a life lived at the surface.
The sea is full of life. Yet, it’s a barren desert and a killer at the surface. No one can survive it for long periods. It’s below the surface where the water is the buoyant, wet equivalent of the Amazon.
It’s absolutely, unfathomably full of life.
…
(I swear I’ll get to my point soon.)
Existence at the surface is barren for a reason. There’s nothing to diversify what reality is. There’s no depth. It’s a blue sky and a blue plain, only disrupted by the incomparable beauty of a sunset on an unreachable horizon or by storms that will kill anything sitting vulnerable on the surface.
But that’s what we get when we live only as the world tells us to.
…
Mostly because of the unprovoked childhood…
…meaning, I didn’t have mentors, partially my own fault, to test my intellect and help me find value in it…
…I became very gullible. Not in the way that people could prank me well, but in the way that I made decisions in my own life by entrusting everyone else’s perspective and beliefs on life.
(Except for religion, my first rebellious idea at 15)
This led me to a decades-long experience of living life not as my own, but by the rules of those closest to me:
I started as a tradesman because it would be a “good job and I could make a lot of money.”
I bought an expensive car because my uncle bought Corvettes and Vipers and it “would get girls.”
I sold my house because “I couldn’t handle being a landlord.”
I turned down art school multiple times because “it cost too much.”
It wasn’t that I didn’t have good times and good experiences. I had a continuous life of thrills in cars and motorcycles. I experienced puppy love and real love. I laughed my ass off, broke bones and got concussions, tattooed a life motto on my back, and lived a full life…to the extent of the surface-level experience.
But here’s what happened.
The whole thing collapsed when it all got so broken that I started to question everything.
And this is my point:
What we think is our greatest flaw can end up being one of the most character-defining things we’ve ever had.
It’s not that I shouldn’t have trusted myself more. I should have.
I should have stood up for myself more. I should have fought for expression and love and my own beliefs. I should have had the boldness to say and act and feel without thinking I was doing an injustice to the world around me.
But a life of indecisiveness and trusting the world more than myself…helped me realize that trusting others to a fault actually transformed into open-mindedness.
It gave me the ability to see people as they are. To inquire about their perspective and experiences, and to always continue to question everything.
But not just myself, everyone else.
Everything.
Because to truly find out who we are takes absolute guts.
Believe it or not, adhering stubbornly and ignorantly only to the way you see the world is disastrous.
It doesn’t only lead you toward possible tyranny, but it isolates you; potentially leading to a self-made exile.
Ghangis Khan? Hitler? Vlad the Impaler?
How paranoid were they? How unjust? Violent? Elitist?
How much did they live inside of and only ultimately trust themselves?
I could be wrong.
But to only define the world by your own experiences and your “correctness” doesn’t stimulate confidence but ego. Not love but indifference or loathing. Not community but separation. Not democracy but dictatorship.
…
So, my greatest fault came to be the greatest thing to push me toward growth.
My inability to trust myself became my ability to seek truth beyond myself to clear out the muddy water.
It’s philosophy and the psychology of the human brain that leads me.
It makes me wonder.
It makes me seek out the soul.
It makes me prove that love means something.
It helps me understand human flaws and the beauty that is diversity.
The importance of differences, perspectives, and voices.
And to question it all means that I’ve chosen to find myself and my life’s mission in others, not just myself.
What are your greatest flaws?
Could they be something else?
What brings you closer to wisdom?
Truth and Love, Reader.