Around the board exams results it is not rare to read in the newspapers about students committing suicides since they didn’t get the desired percentages. Quite obviously they must be in intense pressure either of their own or created by their parents. Either way, they must be under great mental strain at that point in time and feeling that the world around them will crash due to this one incident. The entire focus of the person at that moment is on the fact that he scored poorly in his exam and now his life is ruined. But is it true? Does it happen like that? What about the students who had contemplated the same, with same reasons, but managed to overcome the thought? Did their future actually become dark? Chances are, that the people who lived to tell their stories had a much better life than what they had thought at that time. Chances are, if that the students who were unable to bear the pressure then had looked at their life over longer period of time the pain would have been much more bearable. They would have lived.

Issue, to my mind is the perspective. At that moment it was too narrow, too focussed and too intense. Had it been wider, spread out and forward looking the outcome would have been very different.

Now let us give a twist to the narrative of ‘perspective’ by giving examples of short but different scenarios.
1. The perspective of a person earning daily wages is likely to be how much he earns today, may be tomorrow or may be little longer. If he gets a windfall of about three months income he may just stop working for some time till he has almost exhausted the amount.
2. Do we sometime see men and women, particularly women, forever focussed on what the neighbours are wearing, buying, eating, travelling to, etc? Their entire happiness depends on not what they have but what the neighbour has. ‘Neighbours envy, owner’s pride’. This is another narrow perspective.
3. In the recent days we saw a new party that formed the government at the centre. They came with a promise of ‘acchhe din’. But the perspective of every single person on this shall be different. Someone would like reduction in Income Tax rates, someone lowering of prices of essential commodities, someone better investment climate and so on and so forth.
4. For an employee depending on the perspective for some salary hike may be most desirable, for some others what may be more important could be what others have got, for some others, how little they work to get paid and so the list continues.
The examples may be endless. But in all cases the ‘perspective’ of people plays a very important role in not only our own lives but also the lives of people around us and the society in general. The reason I considered it necessary to include it in my thoughts of life is that we are almost always so concerned about our own perspective that we never have time to observe and connect with the perspective of others.

Here I shall give some more situations to tell how the ‘perspective’ is so important and powerful.
1. There’s a soldier on the front in the situation of war. His perspective is how to kill the enemy first before he is hit. His commanding officer’s perspective is to achieve the task assigned to him even though it may lead to some casualties. The General Officer Commanding has a different perspective. He wants this unit to hold on till the last man knowingly that they are at a weak spot, because he wants enemy to focus on this sector while he makes his moves in the undefended territory elsewhere. COAS’s perspective is that the UN will ensure cease-fire within a week. So he wants to gain maximum territory at the cost of losing minimum so that he negotiates better. Political executive is busy supporting the forces, in diplomatic effort and building domestic support, getting funding and arms and ammunition.
Here, though everybody has a different perspective, with superiors having higher perspective, it will be difficult to say which one is more important – the guy who has put his life at stake on the front or the guy who’s managing the big picture? I guess both are equally essential.
2. Similarly, we are now in the situation of corporate sector, the business organizations. A salesman shall try to sell only an item which sells on its own due to its brand pull. He may not realize that this product is in short supply now, doesn’t give adequate margin to the company and in any case the company doesn’t require him to sell something that sells on its own. Brand Manager shall push only his brand, irrespective of what happens to other brands of the same company. Sales Head knows that he has to achieve targets for all his brands. CEO knows that irrespective of how much more he sells the top brand his bottom line comes from slow moving items and he has to bundle the sale in a way that these products ride on the shoulder of fast moving items.
Once again, the perspectives of people are so different and it’s tough to say which is more important. Both are essential.

Sometime we find that we meet someone who can visualize the entire long term perspective for a particular action point by the time we finish our statement. There are other times we meet someone who says don’t expect me to think about global impact, I’m paid to do a task, just let me know what to do. That’s the difference in the perspective in terms of ‘width’ or ‘horizon’ whatever we may call.

But is it all? Are the ‘width’ or ‘horizon’ only factors? What about ‘depth’? Do we require depth also in our perspective? Is there something called depth?

In my view this is equally important. Depth should be mainly seen in terms of functional or technical expertise. It is extremely important for us to have scientists who go deep into the subject of let’s say cancer research. They are not bothered about the larger or wider perspective. But unless they go deep we don’t have cure for cancer. Albert Einstein went deep in the fission technology to create a nuclear device, but a person with wider perspective used it for radiotherapy for cancer cure. This is applicable to each and every specialized function in our lives. All technical subjects need depth in perspective and knowledge whether it is accounting, law, engineering, medicine, production, automobiles, energy and the list can become endless. Many people study these subjects. But very few are masters. This mastery comes from deep insight and perspective in the subject. Does it mean that people who are not masters are less important? I think not. Imagine a life where we have only specialist doctors with deep insight and no regular physician. Imagine a life where we have only high class automobile engineers who have deep perspective of automobiles. Who will repair our cars then?

There are many organizations today that check the perspective of a person through various kinds of psychometric tests to ensure that right people join the right positions. There may be a person happy with low but regular salary with a job that requires repetitive task without any stress and someone else who is willing to take stress to reach top of the ladder. And this is not something new. Armed forces across the world will ensure that foot soldier, most important part of the forces, is not considered for leadership position based on his perspective of life.

So, is there anything that I’m saying is different? All these things are not only well known but also institutionalized. The reason I’m speaking about it is because I feel that this issue gets lesser importance in our minds than it deserves. We need all kinds of people in this world having different perspectives, but for a society to grow we need to have some people with depth in their perspectives. To harness this depth, we need people who have width and horizon in their perspective.

So, My Little Thoughts Of Life in this context are as follows:
• It is important for us to appreciate the fact that everybody in this world has a different perspective, sometime narrow and sometime wide
• But this is what completes the world. This difference in perspective has to be appreciated rather than frowned upon – stop thinking and saying why the other guy doesn’t understand simple things in life or in other words ‘my perspective’
• Often we spend a long time in making people see our perspective and still fail. It will be better in such case to understand the perspective of others and then try to bridge the difference, which in some cases may be unbridgable
• Depth in perspective is very important for the society and world since that is what builds experts
• But it is most important to have ‘width’ and ‘horizon’. Without this the experts can achieve nothing. It is essential to be aware of this fact and make an effort to create an ability to see the impact of actions, ours or others, in larger context of society, organization, country etc. over a longer span of time. While one failure in exams may be important for one year, on a larger time frame of life it is insignificant since life isn’t determined by one failure. Some actions give poor results in the short term but are extremely beneficial in the long run
• To summarize, appreciate others perspective which would be different as compared to yours, learn to synthesize, have a deeper perspective yourself and keep trying to widen your own horizon

I hope I’m able to communicate the perspective behind my thoughts.