'The Way I See It...'

Differing 'points of view' is nothing new, we see the SAME thing but digest it through our filters of experiences and conditioned attitudes and desired outcomes, which best serve 'us.'

I was a seventeen old the summer of 1956, working at a St. Louis corrosion-protection plant. One product they produced was lead coils and pipes, which resisted corrosive acids. Frequently, the plant received a box car filled with hundreds of lead-bars. The bars had to be removed from the train-car in St. Louis stifling heat that  was near 100 degrees outside and likely 120 stifling-degrees inside the train's box car.

I recall the plant manager telling me at the end of the day, "You should give a work effort every day that causes you total fatigue each night." I did not debate the comment. I was happy to have a summer job paying $1.70 per hour.  This 'white-collar' executive who spent the day in air-conditioned comfort guy said a week earlier that while attending a Cardinals baseball game the following happened: A line drive foul ball came his way and he almost caught it with his bare hands. However, the ball fell to the bleacher floor and another fan retrieved the souvenir. He said that he got into a heated exchange with the ball owner suggesting that the baseball should be HIS predicated on the 'perspective' that HE took the 'sting' out of the ball with his bare hands.

The man's comments often reminded me of a movie I saw where a plantation owner sitting on a Southern Mansion veranda sipping mint juleps noted, "The Negroes seem to be coming in early from the fields today."