Perspective means a lot. I have always tried to be positive and look at the brighter side of things. Even though I wasn’t perfect in this area, this attitude has served me well.
I met a man that always looked at the other side of any issue. I didn’t have any desire to be around him, but we had many occasions to talk to each other. We weren’t friends, but we weren’t enemies either. I learned that he retired as an engineer at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). I asked him why he was always so negative.
He gave me a great answer. He said, “Terry, my job was to break things.” I would be given plans for a project and I would work to find a reason that it wouldn’t work. This process continued until I couldn’t break it. At this point the project had the greatest chance to succeed. We became friends and I learned a great lesson. I learned to value someone disagreeing with me. It causes me to double check my ideas, and see if my opinion changes.
Perspective does mean a lot. My perspective on the negativity of this man led me in the wrong direction. My conversation with him changed my view on a lot of things so you can see that perspective does mean a lot.
I now have a family member working at JPL. He is very young and you wouldn’t think that someone his age would be mature for the type of work that he does. When he was a child I remember him at the beach and we were looking for a satellite. It was supposed to pass over us and he gave my wife and me the correct coordinates. This impressed my wife so much that she still talks about it. The people that interviewed him for the job were smart enough to get past his youthful looks and realize how smart he is.
The point to all of this is simply that you can’t tell a book by its cover or even by a few pages. It takes information to be able to make good decisions.
