My perspective on perspective

Michael-Rainabba Richardson
3 min readJan 21, 2022

I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see the positive response to a comment I wrote and so I wanted to share a bit more of my perspective.

Despite the fact that we all have the exact same, basic needs, our experience in trying to get those needs met can be vastly different. Once those needs are met, we have the luxury of using our more evolved brain for more creative things.

Some people have ALL their needs met, but their mental habits have them focusing on what more they want. Others JUST have their basic needs met and are content. Those people can both exist in palaces as well as dirt-floor huts. It’s all a matter of perspective and the more we build our perspective by listening to and understanding others, the better off we will all be.

First though, basic needs must be met. When someone has no free time because they MUST work to make ends meet, they can’t be overly concerned about other people’s issues. Someone not sure where a future meal is coming from, can’t be concerned about all the people with money, driving their cars around and using electricity. Someone not sure where they’ll sleep in the near-future, or in fear for themselves (physically or otherwise), can hardly care for their own children let alone the world’s population.

I’m not pushing any politics here, just sharing perspective that I’ve gained through this wild story I’m living. We all have infinitely different experiences despite what we have in common. I’m pretty sure that someone looking at my LinkedIn profile will have very little idea of the life experience that has informed my perspective because the only way I think it could be more dramatic is if I were not white-skinned, but even there I’ve had first-hand experiences in Lansing, MI as a child (2nd-5th grade in the middle of the triangle of homes that Malcom X grew up in.) Don’t get me wrong please, I’m not saying, “I get it”. I’m only saying that I’ve lived many other experiences that were NOTHING like that one and I played with friends, in their homes, that made our HUD home (in 1989) look quite nice in comparison. It’s since been demolished having been build in 1898.

In short, I started life as the un-wanted, un-planed child of two very immature, irresponsible and self-involved people. I gained 2 younger siblings via my step-father (who was like mine, an alcoholic that always ran back to mom.)

I moved 30 times before the age of 28. I left home at 17 and was homeless for some time (I had to get away from my mom that badly) until an LDS family gave me their livingroom floor for a bit until someone from another church rented me a room. From their, I tried to run from my life and then-fiancé to the US Marine Corps, where my depression should have gotten the better of me, and a motor-cycle accident all-but did. That ended my Marine Corps career.

From things I’d seen, I didn’t think my child-hood was all that bad … not until decades later, when I became a father. Today my oldest is 11 and I have 3 kids. We’ve nearly lost our youngest and I’ve come close to death a couple times since then (I mean, in the ER, in real bodily danger).

Having been a father for a bit now, having come to find life precious again (even if crushingly hard at times), and having decades of life experience to better inform my perspective on life; I find my parents choices (past and recent-present) harder than ever to understand save for 1 explanation.

Not everyone has been taught the skills, nor necessarily has the bravery needed to confront the harder truths. Some people never had a chance at being able to cope through no fault of their own. Sometimes one or both of those are needed in order to properly grow our perspective and at the end of the day, it is up to each and every one of us to inform our perspectives. I say the above hint at how my perspective has shifted through life.

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Just another human trying to understand the world and how best to find my way through.