My Mom and I were standing in the kitchen. I was washing the dishes and she was cooking something. I peered through the window towards my backyard and noticed something odd. I started rambling on about it and my Mom interrupted saying she couldn’t see what I was talking about.

I took it as an interesting opportunity to calibrate myself to her vantage point, she being much shorter than me. I asked her a series of questions like

“Can you see that?”, followed by, “Well, what about that?”

A few questions later and it’d appear we both had a working understanding of what (and where) I could see and what she couldn’t see.

It’s not hard to understand that we have different vantage points, but I think it’s important to note how quick I was to assume she could see what I could see. I think it’s important to work towards consistently asking yourself, “How is my perspective varied” with those you converse with. Perhaps physically in this case, but more so in the context of life experiences.

I think it’s very powerful to remind yourself that everyone has a unique set of life experiences. It’s what makes the social aspect of life interesting. You can try to understand someone else through communication of different sorts, but everything is distorted through two channels: their experiences and your experiences.