Perception vs. Perspective….A Real Look a Depressing Matters
Writing by Jes on Monday, 19 of January , 2009 at 4:08 pm
Perception: Stalkers are bad.
Perspective: Some actually enjoys my ass enough to obsessively call me.
Perception: Dried monkey paw meat is not a tasty meal (blog coming soon!)
Perspective: People are resourceful in eating what they can in order to avoid starvation.
Perception and perspective…people mistaking interchange these words, but I have come to realize the vast difference in them. A difference so great, it can hold the power of life or death in its hands but for me, it was the different between sanity and insanity, depression or purpose.
Perception is how you receive a viewpoint; perspective is how you administer it.
Why is this so important? Because I have been battling depression. No, that is a lie, Depression had me in a chokehold and I have been calling people in order to receive sympathy, not change my perspective. See, my position here in Africa has made me give up a lot of freedoms that I enjoyed. These things that I enjoyed I realized help shaped me into the person I am and inspire to be. There is no lie that “Independent Women, Miss Independent, or even I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T” all rotate heavily in my playlist and here, I feel like a daggone Scarlet O’Hara, dependent on the world around me and not able to use the voice that screamed so loud in America.
So, I was ready to board the plane. I hated Liberia. I hated Africa and I instructed my mother to burn all my “Power to the People” shirts. I bleached my red, black, and green arm wrists, and I knew I was gone when I started to side with the Gammas and the Gamma Rays in School Daze…”don’t you wish you had hair just like this…then the boys would give you a kiss.”
I was in full plot, how to get home and start all over, because that is the luxury we have in America. To start over. I go back to teaching, I pay bills, I do everything I was doing, but all that did was depress me more. I mean, how is that I travel so far and not go anywhere? So I was stuck with nothing to do but to think. But, I didn’t think…I waited to be rescued. I wanted to have my Titanic moment when I was swept off and rescued. And I screamed at God when my rescue wasn’t working out like I planned it too.
Perception: I am not important enough for you to want to date me.
Perspective: You just opened my schedule up for me to talk to multiple people because you have proved stupidity.
See, I have been allowing other people’s opinions, actions, words, thoughts or their perception have impact on my perspective on my life.
Perception: Africa will be a life-changing experience.
Perspective: Africa will be an experience; I will find ways to make it monumental in my life.
So, it is at midnight and I realize that someone’s perception has influenced my perspective and caused me to be a mass of negativity and self-pity. Because I was allowing someone else to determine my destiny or the purpose of my destiny and I felt lost within it. When you live someone else’s perceptions (opinions, life, viewpoints) it will mess up your perspective on the life that is entitled to be yours. You cannot be fulfilled or happy when you are going after someone else’s goals.
So, simply in order to clear my mind I have to ignore some perceptions and remember why I came here. I have a longer range of plan and I will use this as a stepping-stone to get closer to the end, not as a pity party to begin self-doubt.
Category: January 09
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