It is natural to meet or listen to people we don’t agree with or share their point of view. In fact, it is part of being human, to be able to think in a way that is not necessarily general. But there are certain people that seem to think in ways that you can’t just understand what is going on in their head.
During NYSC I encountered a guy by chance. A young lady was trying to sell some beautiful bead necklaces she had made to my friend, but this guy came from no where and said something like, “this is a waste of time, can you get rich doing this kind of trade? blah blah blah…” and some other things that sounds worse than my paraphrasing. People around him–myself and my friend included–just stared at him, no one could think of an appropriate response to give him. So he walked away.
I have to admit, a lot of responses came to my mind and some of them were not nice at all.
Thinking back to that encounter and many other similar ones prompted the question, “what do I do with people that have a different POV and I don’t naturally agree with?
I found something interesting as I was reading Stephen R Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It is the way he explained ‘paradigm shifting’. “Your paradigm,” he says, “is the source from which your attitudes and behaviours flow. A paradigm is like a pair of glasses; it affects the way you see everything in your life.”
Paradigm then basically influences everything in us, from the way we hear what someone says to the response that comes to our minds; from the way we see situations to our reactions to them; in other words, from our feelings to our expressions.
When someone says something, it is very possible we hear it differently. This is possible because we hear– or see–through different glasses (which is the paradigm).
Differences and different POVs are part life. We can’t all see through the same lens. In fact, we are usually attracted to people with whom we share the same views and opinions. This is what Yuval Noah Harari, in his book, Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, referred to as ‘imagined reality’. It is the kind of reality that doesn’t concretely exist (such as an idea or an opinion or a corporation or even a religion) but in the minds of a collective people, it comes to life. We tend to relate closely with people with whom we share an imagined reality.
But what happens with people with whom we have no such common ground or belief? What happens with someone who sees the world differently? What do we do with them?
Back to paradigm shifting. It is a FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE in an individual’s or a society’s view of how things work in the world.
You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?
When we experience a paradigm shift, we see things through a more sophiticated and clearer lens. We are able to step away from our POV and see things from another perspective. We are more open to understanding why someone would act or think the way they do.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we have to compulsorily accept their way, no, I’m saying we understand their reason or at least come close to understanding it, if we try to see from their POV–if we are open to a paradigm shift. Because it is only then we can accept their difference and not see it as an attack on our own perspective, but rather as just another way things are.
The young man I talked about at the beginning, I came to realise something must have triggered that reaction because from my own point of view, it was uncalled for, but maybe if I had tried to see from his point of view I could have understood why.
For peaceful human relations, I think it is very important for us to be open to paradigm shift when it comes to others since the way I see things is deeply rooted in my beliefs and principles, so it is for others. And understanding as well as accepting that can help us even to learn things we otherwise wouldn’t have known.
