Ever have a moment fall into place? A 'stop' or 'pause' wherein you experience someone else's perspective? Or you're reading a book again, but you are reading it in a different place and time, and suddenly, it hits you differently? Or you have a conversation with someone about something that annoyed you and after they present their take, you aren't quite as annoyed?
Moments like this make me realize that there are many different ways of seeing the same thing, of hearing the same conversation, of arriving at a conclusion. I'm not one to promote self-doubt :), but the grace of holding your thoughts somewhat tentatively, or perhaps I should say openly, allows for slight 'corrections' or different ways of seeing and knowing.
The older I get (and supposedly wiser), the more I realize less and less is black and white. More and More are greys, shades of knowing. In different moment, I may be privy to different insights. And it is now especially, that I appreciate friends close enough, safe enough and brave enough to ask tough questions of me, of my thinking, my motives and my actions. For in their truth, rooted in love, I grow.
“Out there in the world are some six billion human brains each one spinning out its multiple dramas, organising and reorganizing its world, telling its every-changing stories of self and other, right and wrong…If there is hope, it rests in the ability of those busy brains to discover new ways of seeing the world-and then newer ways still. Some part of that will involve understanding how fictitious and changeable are all those public truths, how limited are all the stories we tell ourselves and others about who and what we are." (Anderson, 1997, p. 172-3)