You say Tomato; I say Paradigm...

           I once heard a story from a man about an encounter he experienced on a subway one day. He said that another man boarded the subway, came on with his children, and he sat down. The children were running up and down the isle being absolutely loud and inconsiderate of the others riding. He thought to himself "Wow! He really needs to control his children. He's not even paying attention to them." Well after a short time he decided he was going to say something to the man about his children's behavior. Finally, he looks up and says "excuse me Sir, but your children are disturbing me and the others. Do you think you could get them to stop?" The man looks up and says, "Gee, I guess you're right I should probably say something, but we have been at the hospital all day, and their Mother died about an hour ago, and I don't think they know how to take it."

     WOW!!  Of course you can imagine how awful that man felt for what he had said. In that instant of learning why the man was not scolding his children; there was a shift in his paradigm. I am certain we have all experienced something very similar. We thought things about others only to discover that we really had no right to. And in learning what really was; instead of how WE saw it, our thoughts about the situation changed immediately. That is a paradigm shift. By definition:  it's a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions.  We assume we know what is really going on around us, and perhaps there is some truth to what we "know", but it's always our perception, and sometimes, our perception is very far off. 

     I think the story above illustrates an excellent example of how it is so easy for us to assume we know what is "right". When in fact, it is our perception based off our experiences in life. It really is relative. You can take two people who were raised in the same home with the same experiences, same fairness, and see them later in life living totally different lives from one another. I'll use my brother and I for an example. We grew up exactly the same, but despite what we went through as children we look at life completely different from one another. We perceive things based on how we looked at the situations we grew up with.

    I have gone through many many things through out my life. Things a normal thirty year old should not have, and I am still very young, but people ask me all the time, "how do you do it, I could never do what you do especially without my family in the same state?" I reply the same thing every time... "Just because you can handle something; doesn't mean I can. And just because I can handle something; doesn't mean you can." I do it because I am exactly where I am supposed to be right now. Otherwise, I'd be somewhere else. And I think that goes for everyone. :)