Not everyone sees things the way you do, and that’s OK

It’s easy to forget that not everyone sees things the same way we do.

One of our favorite family stories has to do with the weekend I took my then-6-year-old son Alex to a children’s program sponsored by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

According to the advertisement, we would be seeing a short play/concert about Beethoven and his music from the perspective of a 10-year-old boy who lived in the apartment below the composer in 19th-century Vienna.

As we walked down Michigan Avenue toward Orchestra Hall, I decided I’d better explain to Alex what was going to happen. So I went to great lengths to describe what a composer did, what kind of music composers write and what it might be like to know one.

Alex listened patiently, and nodded his head at the appropriate times — he’d put up with Dad’s long-winded explanations before.

As I finished, he asked his only question. “That’s great, Dad,” he said, “but what about the dog?”

The dog. I realized then that, from Alex’s perspective, we were not talking about the 19th-century composer, but the 20th-century St. Bernard who starred in the 1992 movie of the same name. All this stuff about some kid and the guy who lived upstairs was OK, but where did the dog come in?

I guess it all depends on our perspective. Though Alex and I had been carrying on what we both thought was a perfectly rational conversation, in reality we were talking about two radically different things. I suspect that happens to all of us more often than we realize.

Whether we are talking to friends, family members, colleagues or the clerk waiting on us at the shoe store, there are probably all kinds of misunderstandings that arise just because we are coming at things from different perspectives.

We aren’t talking about right or wrong here, just different. For example, perhaps we were raised to believe that having a clean kitchen meant we always put the dirty dishes straight into the dishwasher. Our spouse, however, was told to stack them on the counter and load them all at once.

When we think of relaxing, we envision a quiet night at home with a good book. Our best friend thinks of an evening out with plenty of things to do.

A colleague at work says “I’ll call you right back,” and we think this means in a few minutes; she thinks it means in a few hours.

The clerk at the shoe store doesn’t immediately rush up to help us because he doesn’t want to seem pushy. We decide he doesn’t really want our business.

Because we all have had different experiences as children and adults, it is inevitable that we will have different perspectives on things; even children growing up in the same families see things differently. There are all sorts of opportunities for misunderstanding in our encounters with each other.

If we recognize we can never totally understand other people’s perspectives, we can head off some problems that arise when we see things differently. Usually a simple “I don’t understand where you’re coming from” or “I’m confused, say more about that” can help us to understand other people’s views.

Of course, once we do understand other people’s perspectives, that doesn’t mean that we’ll agree. We need to remember that no matter how strongly we hold our own convictions, we could be wrong, too. A healthy dose of tolerance goes a long way in such situations.

Oh, Alex did actually enjoy the program. He was a bit disappointed, however, that the orchestra did not play one of the composer’s best-known works, “Roll Over Beethoven.” Try explaining that one.

Ÿ The Rev. Ken Potts’ book “Mix, Don’t Blend: A Guide to Dating, Engagement, and Remarriage with Children” is available through book retailers.