Let’s talk about it.
“Parallax” applies to astronomy, gun scopes, and even to correctly reading needle indicators on old-style analog meters. Ever have a passenger misread your analog speedometer because they were looking over from several feet to your right?
If you don’t look at something straight on, you could take an incorrect reading, miss a target, or worse.
Reading meters on an old transmitter at the Christian Radio Ministry I worked at required us to look at them exactly straight on… or we could crank up too much power through the 1950’s vintage rascal and burn it out!
Foundational principle: In a sense, you can have an error of parallax in relationships. Because different people can have a different perspective of the exact same thing, there’s the potential for all sorts of conflicts and misunderstandings. If that wasn’t true, virtually all Sitcoms would cease immediately. No tension? No plot!
Ever been around a heated argument that was (almost) funny, because you could tell that the people arguing were actually in “violent agreement?” I have! Eventually, they (usually) would realize that they had reached their agreement from different perspectives!
So, okay. Solution? Here’s one of the best I ever heard of.
Obviously, the joint Apollo/Soyuz space missions had an urgent, life-dependent need for Astronauts and Cosmonauts to communicate with 100% accuracy. What did they do? The Russians spoke English. The Americans spoke Russian. If they were working on a task where the assumed next step required a wrench, but the person asked for a typewriter, it was quickly evident that something wasn’t right.
Husbands, can you try to communicate from your wife’s perspective
? Ladies, how about giving us a break and trying to communicate from our perspective? Can we do the same with our kids, at work, in church and elsewhere?
Just maybe at least part of our misunderstandings are an error of parallax?
What are your thoughts?
Blessings!
Bill