Relative Something

It is such a plus to maintain an openness to new perspectives. Whatever the human inclination is that drives us to become closed-minded about the world we inhabit, we sacrifice a richness of experience when we allow limitations of thought to constrain us.

There are so many things that I don’t know about computing and navigating the cutting edge of technology, but that my son has knowledge and experience with. I learn something every time I watch him in action.

One vivid example that comes to mind is when I first got my MacBook Pro with its trackpad that featured two finger scroll navigation. Julian asked me why I wasn’t using the two finger scroll. Quite frankly, it was because I had never needed it before to navigate. I was using the new computer the same way I had navigated on my previous computer. It worked just fine., …until I was exposed to the convenient two finger scroll. With Julian’s simple query, I was prompted to give it a try, and I was immediately hooked by two finger scrolling.

Now I feel severely handicapped when I find myself computing on a machine that doesn’t have this feature to offer. Thank you, Julian, for continuing to enlighten me about everything you discover, especially since I only seem to retain a fraction of what you offer. I always consider myself in debt to you for the nudge, questioning me about my not taking full advantage of that trackpad.

Last night I enjoyed the pleasure of hanging out with 3 of my siblings at an impromptu pizza party –no, it wasn’t Brianno’s, they are closed on Mondays– and we did some computing on my sister’s laptop. Twice, Judy noticed something I did that was new to her. (Don’t forget, hold down the “alt” key and then press “tab” to navigate among the windows or applications that you have open concurrently.) Was she apathetic about the different ways I navigate? No! She became excited to see a new way to use her computer. What a wonderful thing it is to practice an open mind.

I experienced another new perspective yesterday, unrelated to computing. All the way back to when I was in about 9th grade in school and I decided I’d seen enough bad social behavior to never want to be a part of it anymore, I figured the trick I wanted to practice was, be the same person in every possible situation in life. I’ve tried to follow that guideline pretty much ever since, with varying levels of success. I’m not aware that I have managed to gain new insight when it wasn’t working out so well for me, but now I think I see some subtlety that I was overlooking before.

I read something about code switching that struck a chord with me. The term is used often in linguistics and refers to communicating in more than one language. In my case, it was making sense in more of a multi-cultural sense. Even if I desired to keep up a constant persona in all situations –as an attempt to diminish the opportunity for hypocrisy– it would not be right to communicate with others in the same way when I was at an informal event like a friendly party, as compared to a formal event like a funeral or legal hearing. My behavior and verbal communication will switch to a certain degree for different social situations.

The noble goal of always being the same person, no matter what, still involves mastering some level of nuance for best overall healthy participation with others. Between overhearing what I felt was some insensitive dialogue in a multi-cultural workplace and then my seeing the reference to code switching, I gained a fresh perspective on something I have tried to practice, but hadn’t been giving much thought toward for some time.

A couple of different examples of what I feel are both benefits of practicing an openness to new perspectives.