Perspective amidst hard times
Perspective is powerful. When you are standing at the edge of Grand Canyon, and looking into its expansive terrain containing over 2 billion years of geographical history, you cannot help but feel diminished by the world. It’s the same feeling when trying to stay safe from a virus we know very little about. Does it affect not only our respiratory system but also our brain? Is this only phase one of what’s to come? Fear comes from the unknown, from what we do not understand. But fear drives out logic and reasoning.
Where recency bias can overshadow our judgments and thoughts, charts like the one below paint a long-term view. We are in what feels like the dips yet the overall trajectory over years and decades can be upwards.
With that same long-term mindset, what can we learn from this situation? This pandemic is teaching us that we’re all much more alike than we’d like to admit. The virus doesn’t discriminate between borders, wealth, class, or race. Nor do natural calamities. So why do we? All over the world, we are facing the same issue now, and for once understand what we’re each growing through. There has never been a better time to have empathy for one other. A world where religious differences and borders are forgotten concepts.
It is teaching us to be human again. That we can not neglect others and progress ourselves. That our limited time and resources are better spent on progressing humanity than fighting wars.
