A matter of perspective

A SENSE of perspective is what we all need. We should try to develop one, cultivating and enriching it as we go along.

Especially at these times when life’s pace is getting much faster and is exposing us to more and more things, we need not only to be properly grounded but also to be adequately guided.

The sense of perspective starts with a worldview of things, enabling us to relate events, experiences, insights, observations, to an over-all picture of our life and its purpose.

It enables us to relate parts among themselves to form a certain whole. It provides us with a sense of confidence and serenity, a sense of dominion and responsibility, and therefore of freedom, over our life.

It’s what build’s a person’s character, since it springs from a body of core beliefs and convictions, from where we put our faith on, generating a corresponding hierarchy of values to guide our thoughts and actions.

It gives us a sense of right and wrong, of good and evil in all aspects of our life. It endows us with a moral and ethical vision of our life.

Thus, there is such a thing as a Christian perspective, based, of course, on the Christian faith. There are also ideological perspectives, whether leftist, rightist or centrist.

There’s the liberal perspective where freedom dominates over responsibility. There’s also the secularist perspective where things are assessed without any consideration for anything spiritual and supernatural.

Whatever it is, what is important is that we have a clear idea of the perspective we are assuming. We have to continually assess and develop it, because it is a living thing that has contend with the vital flow of new elements and factors.

Much of our problem these days stems from the fact that many people do not realize this. Though there is a natural albeit hidden yearning for this sense of perspective, the reality is that many people are not aware of it and do not know how to develop it properly.

As a result, there is a lot of shallowness and narrowness in the grasping of reality, leading one to simply be reactive rather than pro-active, if not to behave in on-the-spot improvisations, prone to knee-jerk responses.

There’s hardly any long-term vision and sense of direction. The sense of priority is shifty and at best not clear, very vulnerable to passing fads and fancies, to prevailing pressures and to one’s moods and other subjective elements.

When this sense of perspective is not properly developed, we tend not to have a clear idea of what should be held of absolute value that should be upheld no matter what, and what can be considered with relative value only.

We have to be wary of a certain thinking, quite prevalent these days, that says that there’s really no need to develop this sense of perspective. One just judges and reasons as one sees fit in a given moment.

For those occupying positions of leadership and influence in society, developing a good sense of perspective is most necessary. Without this sense of perspective, they can become a source of danger and can cause much harm.

This is especially true to the media who daily feed us with information, views and opinions. The quality of their work and their contribution to society are determined to a large extent by the kind of perspective they have.

It’s what gives depth and scope to their work, and what can truly lead and influence people in a specific way, whether Christian, ideological, secularist, atheistic or agnostic, materialistic or naturalistic.

The Christian perspective, for one, can be described in these words of St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, that show the balance between flexibility and stability:

“We have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit that is of God, that we may know the things that are given us from God.

“These things also we speak, not in the learned words of human wisdom, but in the doctrine of the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

“But the sensual man perceives not these things that are of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined.” (2,12-14)