Parallax

Given two disparate versions of a story, the saying is that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Someone seeking to know what "really" happened must consider the different sides and extrapolate the truth.

The process is further confused by the fact that one's concept of reality is not a necessarily a constant. A person's perception of the truth can change, depending on her point of view.

Hold a finger at arm's length straight in front of you. Close one eye, then the other. Your finger seems to move, shifting anywhere from inches, to feet away, depending on your focus. The phenomenon of an object apparently moving when viewed along a different line of sight is called parallax and in the example above, it is because of the spacing between your eyes.

Why the physics lesson, you ask? It seems to me that people are becoming more and more polarized about hot-button issues. The farther apart two people are on an issue, the more likely that both of them are wrong.

This came to my attention this week when people started commenting on blogs, social media sites, et cetera, about the seeming rash of suicides apparently caused by peer bullying. Specifically, young adults being "outed" as gay, bullied or teased by their contemporaries, and then these people killing themselves as a result.

There are many issues in play in these stories: bullying, non-hetero* attraction, and suicide - not to mention the media's playing up all three in order to create a buzz that ups readership.

This note isn't meant to comment on the right/wrong/other of any of these particular issues. But as someone who has had to personally come to terms with the ramifications of all three, I feel qualified to say that in this instance everyone is wrong when they impose their own point of view on another person's actions.

I have no doubt that some people who preach about the "sin" of homosexuality* actually do think they are helping. Likewise, I heard people comment on the "selfishness" of suicide. I do not begrudge them their opinions, I just realize that they are coming at this from a different angle than I am.

You cannot possibly know what is going through someone else's mind. Even seeing someone else's actions does not give you any special insight into what their intent was when that action was taken. Regardless of your personal opinion on sexuality, suicide or the role parents and authority figures should take when teaching children about the world...you can NEVER know what is best for someone else.

Even parents themselves can only "do their best" when making decisions for their children, and the implications of their decisions may never be fully known.

*(I used a binary sexuality for simplification of my readers, some of whom cannot fathom anything beyond "straight" or "gay.")