Viewing the World with Different Glasses

We all have different glasses we wear when looking at the world, and in particular, when dealing with certain events that happen in our lives.

I'd like to give you an example of what I am talking about here.

A few years ago when I was driving my eldest son home from one of his clubs, I noticed a car just outside our home and next to it was a man who looked to be shouting at a young boy. As I drew closer, I noticed the young boy was my youngest son and he was crying. I slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the car and lost it with the guy who was shouting at my son, and being honest, I was ready for decking him. The guy retreated and held up his hands and advised me there had been a misunderstanding. He was simply asking my son who his mother and father was as he had nearly knocked down my son who was showing off to his friends and standing in the middle of the road when cars were going by.

I looked at my son who confirmed with his eyes that the guy's story was correct. I calmed down almost as quick as I had flared up, apologised to the guy, and explained what I saw from my point of view. We spoke for a few minutes and everything was okay. Needless to say my son was grounded after explaining to him why, what he had done, was dangerous and trying to look big in front of his friends had earned him a two week grounding, plus the fact I nearly decked a guy as I thought he was shouting at my son and making him cry.

Lessons learned

My Son learned valuable lessons on that day: showing off and trying to act the big man is not good, and his father would do anything to protect him. Kids need to know that their parents will protect them at all costs and from that point of view my son knows how much I love him and how what I would do to protect him.

In that situation, I wore the glasses of a father protecting his son. Thinking about it, I could have worn so many other glasses to see the situation from another point of view. In the UK, all workers working with the public have to go through something called a disclosure, to make sure we are fit to work with the public. If there is a criminal record of any type comes through on the disclosure we would be sacked or would not get the job in the first place.

Had I thought about the situation, wearing the glasses of a public service worker I could have approached the situation differently, knowing that I would lose my job if I got a criminal record for punching someone's lights out.

Putting on a different pair of glasses

We all have different glasses we can wear in life and it's good to mentally change our glasses in order to be able to see the world from a different viewpoint. We have the glasses of:

A parent
A brother/sister
A daughter/son
A worker
A spouse
A breadwinner
A friend
A hater
A lover
A doer
A thinker

I think you get what I mean here. There are so many glasses we can see the world through and it's great just to step back sometimes and just wear another pair of glasses sometimes. See the world through a different lens.

It's amazing how your perspective can change when you mentally say to yourself 'I am looking at this from my own point of view, how does the situation look if I look at the world from a loving husband's point of view/a workers view/ a boss's view.

Be interesting to hear what kind of glasses you wear.