Chaplain's Corner

Perspective makes a lot of difference; working in a personal care home I see this a lot. In the course of a week, I sat with a number of residents who shared, unsolicited, their perspective on living in a personal care home. For one it was a grim perspective, “This place is worse than living in a concentration camp.” Before you dismiss this perspective, the person who shared it spent three years in a Nazi prison. But in the very same personal care home another woman shared, “Living here is the next best thing to heaven.v Concentration camp – next best thing to heaven: now there are some polar opposites; how can this be?

“A concentration camp” is a harsh indictment against a personal care home. But if you knew the person speaking the words it wouldn’t be difficult to understand the indictment. This person is coming towards the end of a life full of tragic loss and the loss of independence in regards to living accommodations, food served, and all that is a personal care home feels like the brutal, forced imprisonment that screams, “concentration camp”. “The next best place to heaven”, now that’s an accolade any personal care home would like to put in its information brochure but knowing the source contextualizes the comment. This little lady has spent a lifetime working at learning the secret of contentment and she has learned it well. So at a personal care home where virtually everything is done for you it isn’t hard to understand why she would think it is “the next best place to heaven”.

Back in March the personal care home where I work hosted a concert, a young man who was a trained soloist. He chose songs that he believed would appeal to an older set: Frank Sinatra tunes, Broadway show tunes and love songs from the 40’s and 50’s. The concert was attended by about 30 of our residents and a grade three class that comes weekly for a “grand parenting” program run by our recreation staff. As the music began several people wheeled themselves out of the room, obviously not approving of the music. Others sat politely and listened but the grade three kids sitting on the floor listened with intent, although they may have never heard a single song that was sung. Why such difference in perspective?

Perspective is in part about conditioning. I loved the concert, I grew up listening to all the songs that were sung and could sing along with most. But I also often listen to Nostalgia Radio when I’m alone in the car commuting to and from work. I grew up with my Dad’s taste in music and came to appreciate it myself. Others in the group grew up being taught that “popular music” was “worldly” using the word in the fundamentalist tradition. That conditioning resulted in their leaving, not wanting to expose themselves to such music.

Perspective is also about judgments. Whether we want to admit it or not, we are constantly making value judgments. We carry these judgments without much of awareness unless someone else has the courage to challenge them. Then, if we are not careful, we react in a subconscious effort to protect our perspective. If I examine my judgments with even an ounce of objectivity, I discover that many of them are simply statements of my perspective.

Perspective, we all have one, we use our perspective all the time and it is simply the way we see things from where we are standing. But let’s not forget that other people are standing in different spots seeing the same thing we see from a different perspective. Many times, it is only as we gather the many perspectives together that we get a peek at what is really true about a situation.