THE PATH
When pointing is pointless
We’ve all had the experience of seeing something so clearly, perhaps a new idea, an old idea in a novel way, or just a new perspective, something that has a glaringly obvious value to us. We naturally assume that others will see similar virtues in it, and we’re shocked when we find ourselves struggling to the point of irritation or even exhaustion, in trying to persuade others to embrace even a glimmer of what is so obvious to us.
They are not being stubborn. What you see just hasn’t shown up in their field of vision, and so there is nothing there for them to find. The thing is not low on their list; it simply doesn’t figure on their list at all. That is why your persuasion keeps failing: which works between people who both see a thing and weigh it differently, and has nothing to work on when the thing itself is entirely absent.
Pressing harder won’t do it; insistence cannot make someone see what you see, and the trying only wears you down. What brings a thing into view was never an argument anyway; it is closer to how it came into view for you – not by being told, but by exposure, by proximity, by time spent near it, or near someone for whom it was alive. That is slow and cannot be forced. And the certainty you feel – that the thing is real – is the very same certainty they feel that there is nothing there. Seeing, and not seeing, are one and the same.
next: It might not be your values →