You know the toddler’s property laws, right?

“All the toys are mine. If they are broken you can have them – but the pieces are mine!”

With a little monster like that in the house, you are waiting for the time when he will be able to finally see your viewpoint. The justification for that hope is that it would be good for the monster, so he will understand people around him better, and have it much easier in life once he gets it in his head that “you get much further when you understand thy neighbor.”

But let’s be honest, it’s mostly because I want the monster to see my viewpoint, right? That’s why I am trying to instill this ability in him to see a situation from somebody else’s point of view – even if that “somebody else” is I.

Recently I started to ponder the idea that this might actually not be a good ability to have. Blasphemy, I know.

I might have mentioned – did I ever! – that I am working on a gut understanding of the idea that “the world is as I see it.” But I am still falling into the trap – not the first time – of seeing a situation from the viewpoint of another person. For example, I know exactly what my significant other is doing wrong and what she should do differently when there is a grinding noise in the relationship-gearbox: she should not blame me for something going south because she attracted that into her life, right or right?

….

Wrong – or maybe not wrong, but totally irrelevant. Relevant IS only the fact that there is that grinding noise and that it is I who has created it simply because “the world IS as I see it”. If seen correctly it is I who put this person into my life who is critical instead of understanding that she created all this by herself.

Isn’t that interesting – by assuming her point of view I got rid of the responsibility for my own creations.

Can you believe that I still do this? If I really were so enlightened as I think I am – because I can see all the things somebody else does wrong – then this person, that I think I have to criticize, would not even be there – or would be a different person.

So, do I now change my raising paradigm for my monster to exclude seeing viewpoints other than his own?……

This time I caught the trap – no, I don’t have to change anything regarding the monster, I have to change how I see him – because I am the only thing I can change.