Friday, October 09, 2015

On forgiveness, reconciling, and the view from the tabletop



Two of my sisters and I were sitting around one day, talking about movies we had seen, and Dead Poets Society came up.

"Do you remember that scene where the students in Robin Williams' class get up and stand on the table?" one of them asked.

"Yeah...." my other sister replied.

"I don't like that," said the first one, grimacing.

I couldn't believe my ears!

"Me neither!" my other sister chimed in agreement with such vehemence that I was even more flabbergasted. At the same time, it was kind of amusing that something I found almost movingly refreshing had the opposite effect on my two sisters. Of course they were a year apart in age, and I was a full decade younger, which probably accounted for the difference in perspective and preference. While they abhorred the scene in question from the critically acclaimed movie from the late 1980s (which I guessed did not impress them one bit), I found it delightfully striking.

"Huh? I love that scene!" I said, letting my disbelief and amusement show. "I think it's a great way to show that we have to constantly look at things from another perspective..." I said something like that -- I don't remember exactly what I said but I do remember how funny I found the whole thing. They hated the scene, and I thought it was brilliant. We spent the next couple of minutes laughing at our obvious difference in tastes.

Well, isn't the ability to look at things from a different perspective a great way to expand one's horizons? To learn something new? To see something in a whole new light? You may not need to stand on a tabletop to acquire a fresh context as regards things you previously took for granted, but another vantage point sure can help bring out the finer details that previously went unnoticed.

That's what this video did for me as far as an invaluable friendship  is concerned:







 Think about it. And here's something else worth considering:






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