I have always been intrigued by perspective. Our perspective shapes everything - how we see people, places and things - yet it’s perhaps one of the most underestimated parts of our lives.

The dictionary defines perspective as “a view or vista, and a mental view or outlook of the relationships of the aspects of a subject to each other and to a whole.” This is just a fancy way of saying it is the way we see things. When we are young we develop our perspective and the older we get the more we realize how difficult it is to change this outlook. Depending on how you were raised, what you did as a child may lead to a biased perspective, not allowing you to take into account each and every thing that you see.

Aside from how our own perspective has an impact on our lives, others’ perspectives influence almost every person and culture on this planet. All things are seen in perspective, including social norms, cultural values, folkways (routine conventions we fulfill throughout each day), mores (a more defined function of a culture) and even religion. All these are based on a form of perspective. Honestly, is what we see as truth actually true? Or is it just some sort of articulated perspective that we have been around for so long that it has become what we see as true?

For example, consider “The Truman Show.” Truman Burbank’s life is the basis of a “reality” TV show. What he doesn’t know is that his entire life and world has been created so that people all across the world can watch it as a television show. In the end he discovers that everything he has ever known is a lie. When his perspective changes, so does his world.

Now, who’s to say that something like this isn’t happening with us? Who really knows what truth is? What we see as truth was just once someone else’s perspective, but because it has been around people tend to accept it as an absolute.

If all people realized what the truth was, what would happen? Would the truth bring prosperity? Maybe it would bring chaos. Needless to say, we don’t understand what the truth of the world is. So we continue as we have for years, living by others’ perspectives, allowing them and the media to define and shape our habits and ways of life, until the next great phenomena comes around.