Have you ever noticed how you typically have to experience something first hand to really understand what it's like? How you have to go through something yourself before you fully grasp what others who have been through the same thing might feel? How you can't relate to others who have seen the Grand Canyon until you've seen it too? I call that feeling or reality perspective.
I've come to believe that true perspective only comes with contrast. You never really know what something is until you can contrast it with something that it is not. Take the Grand Canyon. Everyone knows that the Grand Canyon is big. But I've seen some pretty big trucks, and some pretty big buildings. Heck, for that matter, I've seen some pretty big mountains and rivers and lakes. If you've been to the Grand Canyon you know...everything else seems small. You walk up to the edge of it expecting something big and you're surprised because big isn't descriptive enough. When you, a person maybe somewhere between 5' and 7' see the Grand Canyon you feel like you're as small as an insect. Perspective comes with contrast.
Don't believe me? Take photography then, or rather think of focus. Put your finger in front of your face about 8 inches out. Now if your finger is bigger than your eye, you might have eye cancer! JK JK. Keep your finger there and focus on your computer or phone or tablet or whatever else you might be reading this on. Then focus back on your finger. Then back to the screen. You see a whole different set of things when you switch your focus. One moment you're thinking, "Man is there something wrong with me since I'm seeing two fingers when I know I only have one up?!?" and the next moment you're thinking, "Geesh I should trim my finger nails more often." Perspective is a lot like focus. Whatever you're focused on will automatically exclude everything else. You can't focus on two things at once. Now, if you get really good at it, you can focus on something but still be paying attention to a lot of other things outside of the center of your focus-kind of like a narrow aperture in photography. Your depth of field can increase with skill.
I think that life works the same way. You gain perspective when you contrast things. When you've experienced something, say depression for example, you gain a new sense of perspective on what it means to be affected by your feelings and circumstances. Or say you loose something very valuable to you, you gain some perspective on what it's like to life without certain privileges or conveniences. You gain a fuller perspective when you have something to contrast with. You may not even be able to tell that that favorite white t shirt of yours is actually kind of ivory until you can hold it up against a brand new white t shirt. You probably don't think your vision is that bad until you can contrast it with the vision you have when the optometrist flips that lens down giving you two examples of how you might be able to see. Perspective comes with contrast.
