My Universe is Ego-Centric

The whole world centers around me. We teach people that it isn't true, yet one's perspective cannot be changed to include the perspective of someone else to the exclusion of himself. It cannot be done from a metaphysical perspective, though we hope to work to the point where it can be done on a spiritual level. We may want to value others better than ourselves, but the fact is that fictional shows like Freaky Friday aside, it is impossible to step into someone else's skin and see the world from their point of view.

I just can't completely understand what you're seeing, feeling, or thinking without placing myself plainly within your skin, and despite whatever movies may tell you, this just isn't possible in this world. So try as I might to empathize, my best potential is just to try to understand.

This point becomes important in at least two different realms of life. First, whenever you are having a conversation with anyone who isn't yourself (which is really when conversations are at their best!), you have to understand that the person to whom you are talking does not have the exact same perspective as you do for whatever you are talking about. It is impossible for it to be exactly the same, even if you are twins.

The second situation where this comes into play is that there must be differences, even important differences, between even the best of friends. Henry Ford famously (or maybe not so famously) said, "Whenever two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary." As much as we may want to find ourselves in agreement on everything, even with whom to be friends, with someone, we will find that kind of agreement placating and, in the long run, detrimental.

You see, because of my world being so unique and seeing only how everyone deals with me, my limited view is what I have. And if someone has happened to cross me or my thought processes at the wrong time, my perspective may never be able to be altered. I may do have an incomplete view. My world is not the actual world, yet I am a slave to it.

So, as much as we try to tell people (especially our children) that the world doesn't revolve around them, the fact is it kind of does. Sure, in the sense of astronomy, it certainly does not. Yet in the sense of their life, everything does revolve around them. There will be great men they will never meet and atrocities they will never know. And that is just something we cannot get around.