Perspective is the single most important, yet widely under-appreciated, aspect of life.

Perspective is what makes us who we are; what makes us think and act the way we do. It is something that affects everybody and although many of us either dismiss, or fail to acknowledge perspective, without it, we would cease to see, cease to feel, cease to understand or to appreciate. Your perspective on life is what allows you to decipher the good from the bad, it allows you to feel the way you do about… about everything.

Take this for example: a father stands in the shower with hot water cascading over his back. To him, this is bliss – or so his perspective tells him. He shuts off the shower, leaving the temperature unchanged. A minute later his 5-year-old son enters the stall and is immediately scalded by the same water that his father, only a minute before, found so blissful. Sure, the kid’s skin is softer than Dad’s, but it is the child’s perspective that registers this.

Now to a less tangible example, a family in a first world household expect that when they flick a light switch, the light will come on. They expect to turn on the tap to have a plentiful supply of clean water. They expect the toaster will scorch their bread, they expect the washing machine will launder their clothes. A family from a third world way of life, conversely, will be thankful for every liberty that they receive. They might flick on a light switch, only to be reminded that the modern convenience of electricity has yet to reach them. Their tap might be more of a communal set-up, in the form of a large rain-water tank out back – so what happens if there is no rain? They fetch their water from the muddy little stream behind their shanty – the same stream in which they bathe and launder their clothes… the day that this stream runs clean, oh that is a fine day indeed.

A wealthy man from an affluent suburb is effectively the same person as a man who lives in a corrugated iron hovel whose only currency is fruit and grain; yet it is perspective that makes these two men so very dissimilar. The wealthy man becomes angry if his receptionist fails to pass on an important message and becomes despondent because he subsequently misses out on a lucrative promotion. The man whose wealth lies within the well-being of his family becomes angry because a poacher shot his pet goat, meaning there will be no milk for his family; he becomes despondent because his children are dying of malnutrition – a predicament which could have been avoided had his goat still been alive.

People in  the first world really have no right to ever be angry, resentful or depressed. Seriously, wake up and look at the rest of the world; look at what you have compared to what they will never have. It doesn’t bother them simply, because they don’t know any better. You can’t miss what you’ve never experienced and you can’t experience what you do not have.