Hi Reader,

When I set out to write my book, I had lots of different motivations. Some were positive, let's say, while others we might call negative.

This seems very ordinary. We all do things for good and bad reasons (or at least what we judge as such).

I was examining my reasons and saw something new I wanted to share with you.

I didn't realize it at the time, but a big motivation for writing my book was that I was uncomfortable with people who saw the world as black and white. We might ungenerously call them "narrow-minded," though we would do well to remember that we're all narrow-minded a bunch of the time.

I think the fact that my book was sort of indirectly aimed at people like this lacks integrity. Not like it's a big failure or anything like that, just that I didn't know enough about myself at the time to be clear about it.

But the thing I'm interested in having discovered is a layer deeper than that.

A while back I wrote you an email about how I have a tendency to get lost in perspectives. That I try to see things from lots of different people's points of view, and lose sight of my own (which is the most important one; or at least the one I have the most supporting evidence for).

What I realized is that this aperspectival madness I'm susceptible to is not objectively better than the narrow-mindedness I'm squeamish about. Both of them reject or overlook important aspects of being. On the one hand, being closed to the nuance of life is dangerous and can be scary to the people you impact. On the other, being disconnected from your own perspective means you aren't taking responsibility for yourself and your impact. So, really, both of these "failings" (in scare quotes because they're not really failings, just the normal foibles of creatures saddled with millions of years of evolutionary baggage) have a very similar outcome: they cause us to not see clearly. To miss our actual impact on others.

It's funny. They say you write your books for yourself. It strikes me how true that is, in more ways than one. In some really unexpected ways. I mean, I'm human, so my brain knows on some level that I'm a hypocrite. Ok, that is what it is, I can deal with that. But it's another thing entirely to catch myself in the act. I'm not even embarrassed or ashamed. I guess I'd say it's humiliating, but not in a bad way. Just in the way that makes me feel some humility.

So, now over to you. What do you see about your own perspective? Anything come to mind for you while you were reading this?