It Is All About Your Perspective.

It Is All About Your Perspective. 26/8/2007

How do we really perceive reality? This thought came to me recently, just after I made a remark about that day' s predicted temperature, and then very quickly remembered a completely opposite assessment of the same temperature, made many years ago by someone else.

I think most of you know by now that we spent many years in the Transkei region of South Africa based in the Capita Umtata (now spelt Mthatha, I believe.) which was about 100 Kms inland from the coast on the South East side of South Africa, about 400kmns below Durban, Anyway, the winter day temps there were around the 20 – 24c range after a cold night around 2 – 4 C. Very enjoyable indeed I muss add, to one used to Melbourne’s winter highs! (By the way an apology is due here for all those who don’t operate on the Celsius/ Centigrade Scale. Sorry but you will need to do your own Maths to work out the Fahrenheit Scale. Again, sorry, but it is a loooong time since we changed from Fahrenheit here!)!)

However, for our last 6 months in South Africa (and our last winter there,) we were based further up the coast, at Port Shepstone, right on the coast, just 100 kms +/- below Durban.

We had a great time there as the house was on a hill overlooking the ocean, and we had Monkeys running through the yard and what we considered lovely weather. Which it was, except for one week apparently, when, if not all the Indian people, certainly all the Indian people that we were working with there at the time, were complaining about the current Cold Spell that Port Shepstone was experiencing!!!

I really hadn’t noticed it particularly, but I guess when you are used to a constant Temperature around 22c every day, 17c can feel like a cold snap, can’t it?

So for the people of Port Shepstone at that particular Winter- time of 2002, 17c was a Cold snap. But what about winter in Melbourne 2007?

When I heard that that particular day’s predicted top was going to be 17c, I spontaneously burst out with, “Wow, we’re facing a heat wave!” (Not that I really think 17 is hot! In fact I will write a later blog on how I feel the cold more than many, but that’s for later.) When one is used to constant temps around 22c, 17c is a cold snap, but when 10 – 14c, has been the norm for the past few weeks, 17c, even though occasionally seen in winter here, does seem like a Heat Wave. It really is in how you see the same fact from different circumstances and perspectives, doesn’t it?

So what is there in your life right now that you are complaining about or struggling under, that under different circumstances would be seen in a better light? And what can you do now, to show those things in a better light in your life right now?

After all, a lot of these things that bother us are benign in and of their own right and often it is only how we view and react to them that makes them helpful or hurtful to us. And through us, to others!!!!! What say you? Walter