Get Out of Your "Own Little World"

When I was a kid growing up in Ohio, I didn't know much about the world.  And that led me to have a rather narrow view of life when I was a young man.  I remember thinking that anyone, regardless of circumstances, could get ahead through hard work.  Then I took a trip to a developing country, and I saw people who worked much harder than I did but were unable to escape poverty.  My thinking began to change as my world enlarged.

 

To change focus, people need to get out of their own little world.  If you have a narrow view of people, go places you have never gone, meet the kind of people you do not know, and do things you have not done before.  It will change your perspective, as it has done mind.

- John C. Maxwell, Winning With People, Pg.65, Thomas Nelson Publishers, c2004

Life & Language

To speak of the person as a living human document is to acknowledge this connection between life and language.  It is to acknowledge that to understand what Boisen calls the inner world is dependent upon understanding the language by which that inner world of experience is connected to external events.  To understand the inner world of another is therefore a task of interpretation—interpretation of a world of experience that is itself an interpretation of the myriad events and relationships that make up a life.  Said another way, the task of understanding another in the depth of that other’s inner world is a hermeneutical task.  It is therefore subject to all the problems and possibilities that the interpretation of an ancient document, such as a New Testament Gospel or Epistle, involves.  The difference is that this document is living and continues to disclose itself in new language and behavior that expresses its inner world.  – The Living Human Document, Charles V. Gerkin, Abingdon Press, c1984