A Pencil and a Lesson
Lee la versión en español aquí.
It is often said that parents are not born parents but rather they learn to be one as time goes on. They learn to pour all of their knowledge, values, and experiences onto their kids through games, anecdotes or simply by talking. This legacy, as tiny as it might seem, is composed of a set of tools that can prove to be useful in life.
I have a recurring memory that comes to my mind in every time I have a moment of insight.The image is quite clear: my mother is holding a pencil pointed right towards my face while she asks me what I see. This was a game that would turn out to be a very important lesson for me.
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How easy can it be to answer that question considering what is seen superficially? It was easy; I said: “The sharp, narrow tip of a graphite pencil.” Her next question was: “What about me? What do I see?”Another obvious answer: “A graphite pencil with a very sharp tip.”
My mother would ask me the same question again, but this time referring to my sister: “What about Luly? What does she see?” By then I already felt like she was making fun of me, so I replied quite upset: “A graphite pencil with a very sharp tip.”
I had proved my mother exactly what she had wanted: My inability to look beyond what was right in front of me at that time. With that typical tone that school teachers use when they know they have made a point, she explained: “Luly can not see how sharp the tip is. Does that make her less smart? Does that make her less capable? No! She just has another point of view.”
One can hardly have a complete picture of a fact, an object, or anything at a given time. And I think that the ability to listen and understand the reasons that others have for their perception is what enriches us the most.
Listening to points of view that differ from our own, without prejudice or preconceptions, is as enriching as it is complicated. Proportionally, the difficulty increases when we try to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and intend not only to listen but also to understand what has lead them to have that point of view.
And so it is that today I understand that every matter that is to be discussed consists of a whole set of views and opinions. It’s like a prism: it can have as many perspectives as angles from which we can look at it. Some of those views are going to be very similar, others, very different. What matters is to acknowledge that all of them exist, even though we may not see them.
Following this lesson, another memory comes to my mind involving my mother, my sister, a game, and another lesson… but I think it would be better if we leave it for our next post.
Posted by Santiago Bermúdez Baglietto (santiago.baglietto@wolox.com.ar)
