A Shift In Perspective
When I went to college I truly believed that I knew a lot about everything. I quickly realized, after two or three classes, that I didn't know jack squat. In fact, I realized that my perspective on things was constantly being viewed through a single lens: my own. Now this lens, made by family history—a home-schooled education, church, hundreds of books, and a good sense of ego and purpose—had a hard time thinking there could be other perspectives that were "right." Now I knew intellectually that of course there were other people that had views of the world and they had a right to their "opinions." But I was of course in the right. Their perspectives just needed a little persuasion into the correct way of viewing the world. My way of viewing the world.
It's comical how wrong I was (and sometimes still am). It's almost cringe-worthy when I look back and imagine the young man who thought he knew so much. The older I've become, the less I hold onto things with a certainty that doesn't allow room for doubt, or possibility of something "different" or "other" than myself. The lens darkened for me and I realized I needed to really get rid of it so that I could see the world with a fresh pair of eyes.
Now we all have heard the story of David and Goliath. The story we grew up on is like any other underdog story. David, a shepherd, stands up to Goliath, a warrior and claims he will defeat him because God is on his side and he can do anything with God on his side (I'm obviously condensing a bit here). But what if David knew before he went down into that valley to challenge Goliath to one on one combat, which actually is a real thing that happened back then, that he would win because he wasn't going to play by Goliath' rules. What if David was a killer shot with a sling and there was no way he was going to face of in a sword fight with a giant. What if you actually looked at the history of slings in that day and age and it was the equivalent of David bringing a gun to Goliath' knife fight. Your perspective might shift as to how the story we've been told is actually a whole lot different then we had previously imagined.
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell is filled with these stories. The opening story is the one about David and Goliath and he weaves it throughout the entire book to remind us that sometimes the stories we tell leave out key elements causing us to misconstrue what really happened. I mean of course we want to believe that David was probably just a small kid who had God on his side (which he did) but he also was a killer of wild beasts and knew how to kill lions and bears. What's a giant when you already know you can kill something from a distance before they can do you any harm at all?
We constantly are getting the stories we think we know wrong or at least misreading them. "We misinterpret them. Giants are not what we think they are. The same qualities that appear to give them strength are often the sources of great weakness. And the fact of being an underdog can change people in ways that we often fail to appreciate: it can open doors and create opportunities and educate and enlighten and make possible what might otherwise have seemed unthinkable" Gladwell states in the opening chapter. I thought I knew way more than I actually did and the knowledge gained once I put down my own lens to see others perspectives changed me to my very core.
Malcolm Gladwell has always had a way of causing his readers to view the world in a new way. From Tipping Point, to Outliers he has used psychology, surveys, and insightful story telling to help his readers form a more informed perspective of the world they live in. He takes it to other step in this book and helps us realized that the underdog story we tell ourselves can be more than just a small man taking on a giant; there are strengths and weaknesses in both positions. The problem comes if we aren't able to see the benefit of the position we are in or if we can't get outside of the stories we tell ourselves. For example, as I trudged off to college, I thought I knew everything, but once I allowed other perspectives in I realized their were so many beautiful ways to see the world outside of my own two eyes. I could have easily continued to bludgeon people with my own opinion and never admit defeat but I wanted to shift my perspective and take on the world like a child does. Reading this book helped remind me that viewing the world and shifting your perspective is a constant task. I will never arrive to the end where all I am is simply "right," and I would never want to.
I wanted to thank Jordan Shepherd for the book and the conversations revolving around this subject. He's a good friend and a lover of words like myself. Cheers!
