Three people on one corner

Three people stand on the same corner in Ajman in the late afternoon.

A delivery rider sees where he can stop without being moved on, which entrance has a lift, and which building's guard will make him wait. A woman in her seventies sees a kerb that is too high and a crossing that gives her too few seconds. The man who runs the mobile phone shop on the corner sees the people walking past, and how many of them glance in.

One street. Three different streets.

None of them is wrong. Each is seeing what their body, their work and their worries allow them to see. And none of them is seeing the street as it actually is, because nobody does. Nobody gets the unfiltered version. Each of us gets the one that comes through our own lens.

It is tempting to treat that as a fault to be fixed, as if with enough effort we could take the lens off and finally see things correctly. We cannot.

There is a different goal within reach, though. Not to see the world correctly, but to see it in a way that helps.

The shop owner can keep his view of the passers-by, because it serves him. He might also borrow the rider's view for a day, and notice that many of his customers never walk past at all.

If the way we judge people, choose what to work on and make decisions is already getting us what we want, there is nothing to change. For most of us, some of it is not. Those habits and instincts are not fixed. They are the lens, and a lens can be adjusted.

The street will not change. The way we look at it can.