How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?
Life is made of moments. There is something that can happen in your life and change your whole view about life. It is life experiences that causes shapes our perspective about life. Infact according to psychologists, it is our environment that determines our thoughts and consequently our behaviors, our feelings and our expectations.
Life events like joining new schools, entering into a relationship, rejection or marriage always open new pages in life that becomes source of new knowledge. Events in life gives new experience which may become our new reference about life. For example if you tour another country away from your own, you realize there is a better way of doing things apart what you have used to do from your home country.
Before we experience something, we usually depends on what we have heard from other people, which may be very different from reality. This is because people distorts information to suits their interests, and so their opinions can only give a limited view of any phenomena.
For example, a man’s view from a single man about women is very different from that of man in marital relationship. So also to a woman who is living with a man. A date with a person you have despised can change the whole perspective about them and same can happen by having a moment with your crash.
Events provides with first hand experience with things we have only theoretical knowledge about it. I used to admire banking jobs but when I had opportunity to work in a financial institutions, I realized that, I cannot endure staying behind counter or in a closed office for hours on end. Not only did I find it boring, but it was kind of a torture, I realized am not wired for routines and restricted life, it makes me sick. That changed the whole perspective about people in closed offices, instead of just admiring them, I always tend to worry, what could be going through inside them, are they happy? I nolonger see them as people with everything together but people with their ups and downs. People admire my job when they my energy and passion, but later they despised me when they discovered that I earn too little from what am soo passionate about. Others have opportunities to spend a day in school as an interns teacher or in peer teaching and they don’t that job anymore. What they thought would be great when they were in class before their professors is nolonger exciting when they get opportunity to practice it.
People that has experienced people dying at their watch can never be compared with people that have never had such experiences. People that has lost parents can never be the same as people that has grown with both parents until they became independent.
Life events causes pain or boosts our self esteem. People sees life through lens of pain they have gone through. Rejection can cause you to see members of opposite gender as evil and dating as unnecessary events.
People that has grown in poverty sees life very different from people that has grown in affluence. Our environment where we have grown shapes our emotions, though patters and speech. I once listened to Bishop T.d Jakes on how he watched her mother dying and how it changed his perspective about life. Things like sickness , loss of property or wars changes our perspective on religion, worship and supernatural world. People becomes more religious when they are in difficulties or in humbling circumstances and less religion in prosperity and affluence.
Age and passage of time also affects how we see life. Things that used to excites me are nolonger exciting to see the least. Things that used to bother me are nolonger an issue. I used to be irritated by people when they behaved in unexpected way, but nowadays am more torelant and am nolonger offended by small issues. I used to be hot tempered but time and meeting of so many people together with age, have seen me become more calm and reserved.
So with those few highlights I believe life events changes alot about how we view life.