WHEN A POINT OF VIEW IS CRUCIAL

There’s an image that has been circulating for years: two people standing opposite each other, with a number drawn on the ground between them.

One looks at it and sees a 6.

The other looks at it and sees a 9.

And both are certain they’re right.

I’ve always liked that image. Maybe because it sums up something that takes us far too long to learn: seeing the same thing doesn’t mean seeing it in the same way.

It depends on where we are. What we’ve lived through. What we know. What we feel. And sometimes, simply which side we’re sitting on.

Sometimes, 6 is a 9.

Not to prove that everyone is right. Nor to say that there are no truths. But because, between what happened and what each person believes happened, there is often room for an entire story.

And that is precisely the story that interests me.

What exists between black and white. Between right and wrong. Between what I see and what you see.

For a long time, I thought understanding someone meant agreeing with them. Today, I see it differently.

I can try to understand your 9 without stopping seeing my 6.

I can listen to your version without erasing my own.

And maybe that’s where some of the most interesting conversations begin: when we stop trying to decide who is right and start asking where each person is looking from.

There are arguments that perhaps don’t begin because someone is wrong.

They begin because two people are looking at the same moment from different places.

One says: “I went quiet because I needed time.”

The other heard: “I don’t care enough to talk to you.”

One says: “I was only trying to explain myself.”

The other felt: “You’re not listening to anything I’m saying.”

One moves closer because they need to resolve things.

The other pulls away because they need space to be able to think.

And suddenly, no one is talking about what actually happened anymore.

We’re reacting to what we think the other person meant.

Maybe that’s where a 6 so easily becomes a 9.

Someone’s intention doesn’t erase the impact they had on us. But the impact we felt doesn’t necessarily tell us what the other person’s intention was either.

Perhaps the difficult part isn’t accepting that there are two perspectives.

The difficult part is what happens when we need our own perspective to be acknowledged.

Because there is a difference between saying:

“I see a 6.”

and saying:

“It’s a 6. And if you see a 9, you’re wrong.”

It’s in that small difference that so many conversations get lost.

Listening to someone else doesn’t require me to abandon what I experienced. And validating what someone felt doesn’t mean taking responsibility for something I don’t believe I did.

It simply means being able to say:

“I didn’t see it that way. But I can understand that, from where you were standing, that’s how you saw it.”

Maybe that’s what understanding someone really is.

Not changing places forever. Not pretending that the 6 stopped being a 6 just because someone on the other side sees a 9.

It’s getting up for a moment and walking to the other side.

Looking.

And thinking:

Ah. From here, it really does look like a 9.

Then I can go back to my place.

I still see a 6.

But I no longer need to believe that, for me to be right, you have to be wrong.

Maybe the problem was never the number.

Maybe it was that we spent so much time trying to prove what we could see that we forgot to ask the other person:

“Can you show me where you’re looking from?”

Because sometimes, it’s a 6.

Sometimes, it’s a 9.

And sometimes, it’s both.