Point of View

The Sufi sage Mullah Nasuruddin was passing by a town marketplace when he saw a crowd of people gathered around two men, who were engaged in a heated quarrel. Each of them argued with an opposing view.

“Calm down.” Nasuruddin intervened in the dispute. “What’s the problem?”

One of the combatants told his side of the story.

“You’re right.” Nasuruddin said, after listening quietly.

“But, you haven’t heard my point.” The other man yelled.
Nasuruddin heard the second man out, and responded with equal certainty, “You’re right.”

“Wait a moment,” said a bystander who had been listening, “They can’t both be right.”
Nasuruddin looked at the bystander and nodded. “You’re right.”

Everyone is right from their point of view. People look at the same thing from different perspectives. One man’s meat is another man’s poison. If a coin is held in between two people seated directly across each other, one of them will see heads, the other will see tails. And they will both be right.

During one rainy day in the midst of the Mumbai monsoon, the compound of my building was covered with puddles and slush, and muddy water all over. I was seated on the steps of the building as I saw one of my friends, Ravi, approaching. He surveyed the scene with a look of disgust.

“Yuck,” He exclaimed, as he gingerly took one step at a time, trying to avoid the puddles. He grimaced. “This is filthy muck. Everything gets so dirty in the monsoons in this country.”

A few minutes later, another friend, Karan came to the compound. He had a broad smile on his face.

“La la la la,” He hummed out loud as he hopped and skipped through the muddy water, unafraid to get his feet wet.

“Don’t you love the monsoon?” He grinned at me.

Two people, two ways of looking at things. Seven billions human beings, seven billion mental perceptions of the world.

This is something to think about the next time you get into an argument where you are convinced that you are right and the other person is wrong. Maybe, the other person is looking at the coin from a different angle. Maybe, from his angle, he is right. Or maybe, there is no right or wrong, just different points of view.