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Just a note: I’ve shifted the “rules” for post­ing com­ments on this blog. You will now see your com­ment appear directly, with­out a delay for approval. I really want to hear from all of you, so click on the post title, above, and leave a comment!

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Many, many moons ago, when I was in Col­lege, I did a dou­ble major in Psych and The­ol­ogy. As I was inter­ested in art, I did an art minor — mostly because I liked one of the art teach­ers, and she wanted me to set up the col­lege dark­room. Pho­tog­ra­phy was some­thing I was good at.

Any­way, I was think­ing back to then, and think­ing about art classes in gen­eral. I remem­bered paint­ing stu­dio, and specif­i­cally life class. I think I still have one of the paint­ings I did way back then, but mostly I remem­ber a bunch of us at easels, stand­ing and sit­ting in a semi­cir­cle around a model on a plat­form. The instruc­tor said that she thought I already knew how to paint, so she skipped the struc­ture lec­ture and started cri­tiquing my eye for colour. Specif­i­cally, I remem­ber her say­ing, “Now, see if you can find the pur­ple and orange in the shadow.” I said, “But… the shadow is brown!” Her reply, “Look again!”

But here’s the real story:

We were all paint­ing the same thing, (or in this case, per­son,) but each paint­ing was unique to its painter.

Some peo­ple painted the model’s head, some her back, some her front, some her hands. In some of the paint­ings, there was a resem­blance to the model, in oth­ers, well… not so much.

I won’t beat this to death. This is a demon­stra­tion of see­ing and per­spec­tive.

We want to remem­ber that although each per­son was paint­ing the same model, each person’s paint­ing was a result of the skill of the artist, and what side or the model was fore­most for the artist. The model was a whole, and each artist, by def­i­n­i­tion, can only grasp and use a part of it.

So, where we stand deter­mines what we see

Lit­er­ally and figuratively.

I’m amazed at the per­sis­tence of the belief in the uni­ver­sal accu­racy and valid­ity of per­sonal per­spec­tive. Clients typ­i­cally focus in on one or two things — they have a pat set of per­sonal views about the flaws their part­ner has, or per­spec­tives on their failed lives, or there’s job related stuff — and those per­sonal per­spec­tives colour every­thing.

Here’s a story: a cou­ple of days ago, Dar­bella and I were talk­ing with a friend. She men­tioned that she’d been mar­ried 20 years now, and that her hus­band didn’t like it when she got bois­ter­ous — so, for some time, she’d been really ton­ing it down. His stated per­spec­tive was that she had been a bit of a wild child as a teen and 20-something, and he equated any exu­ber­ance on her part with, as he del­i­cately put it, as “Act­ing like a slut.”

She’s been pay­ing atten­tion to us for a while, and quite “gets” what we sug­gest. For years, she has been explain­ing to him that just because he thinks some­thing, it doesn’t make it true.

He finally got it: “I have an issue with you get­ting excited, because I think other peo­ple are judg­ing me. So when you dance around the gro­cery store, I embar­rass myself.”

In other words, he has a per­spec­tive about how a good and decent wife behaves, and the one he has doesn’t match. So, for 20 years, he’s been try­ing to get her to fit — to match — his per­sonal per­spec­tive (which is his, and is not “true” for any­one but him.)

If we go back into the artist stu­dio, belief in the right­ness of a per­sonal per­spec­tive would be equiv­a­lent to the teacher doing a paint­ing, say­ing hers was cor­rect, and demanding

1. the rest of the artists paint exact copies, and
2. that the model trans­form her­self into some­thing that exactly matches the teacher’s representation.

This seems so simple

And yet, one of my most com­plex tasks is to per­suade you and clients (and myself!) that per­spec­tive is nei­ther true, nor valid. Per­spec­tive is just how I see things, and how I see things, right now, depends on my angle of view, the qual­ity of the light, my mood, etc.

In other words, it’s just how I see it, right now.

To think that I some­how have the right to demand that some­one change how they are, to match my per­spec­tive, is both arro­gant and fool­ish.

When I work with cou­ples, I describe this one as “3 choices, 2 that work.”

1. accept your part­ner as (s)he is,
2. leave
3. try to force your part­ner to become who you think they should be.

1 & 2 work, and most peo­ple are stuck on 3.

One more story for this week, back to our friend:

When we walked in, she men­tioned her bad back was get­ting much worse. She won’t do body­work with me, because she hates pain, she tells me. She will, how­ever, let me do a lit­tle, while we’re stand­ing there, talking.

She pointed to a place in her back, about 6 inches above the top of her pelvis. I worked on that a bit, as well as on the small of her back. These points hurt.

I then pushed down and in on the top of her pelvis. She yelped loudly. “Jeez! That hurts more than the orig­i­nal spot!” I said, “That’s because the upper stuff is com­ing from here.”

Now, remem­ber, in the other part of her story, I men­tioned she’d been “ton­ing it down” for some decades? In body­work the­ory, the back pelvis is all about pas­sion for life. In other words, the juice, the joy, the bois­ter­ous­ness comes from the back pelvis. She’s been hold­ing that pas­sion in check, and her back is con­tin­u­ally sore.

A coin­ci­dence? Not from my per­spec­tive.

We can try to sup­press who we are so that oth­ers won’t get mad at us. They pay, we pay, and every­thing is bleak.

Or, we can get over sup­press­ing our­selves while try­ing to manip­u­late oth­ers into doing things our way, and do the only thing we can.

Learn how to paint the can­vas of our life, from our perspective.

Noth­ing wrong with get­ting some guid­ance in the stu­dio of life (like this arti­cle.) But in the end, you have to free your­self to do it your way, and let oth­ers do it theirs.

Dance, paint, love, be pas­sion­ate — while you can — right now.

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
Week­end Residentials

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Tagged with: perspective • truth • world view

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