Kimberly Emerson

Long ago, when I was a kid and needed something to do, and my older brother was at a friend’s house, I used to raid his comic book collection.  I learned many great lessons from this.  (Things like, wow, Peter has a lot of comic books and not all comic books are worth reading.)  One of the lessons that stuck with me came from a story in Richie Rich.  The Poor Little Rich Boy had a dilemma – his butler and his chauffeur were arguing about which one’s job was harder.  (It’s okay, Richie, we’ve all been there.) Not to worry, the good-hearted little millionaire had a trick up his sleeve.  He made his butler and chauffeur switch jobs for the day.  By the end of the comic, they were still arguing, but this time it was about how the other one’s job was harder.  Problem solved.

It is a sad day when a fictional fabulously wealthy seven-year-old is the voice of reason in our country, but we might be there.

I think we need a new national holiday.  It has occurred to me lately that many of us are incapable of seeing things from someone else’s point of view.  I propose we take a day away from our normal routine to fix the problem.  We shall call it Perspective Day.  For an entire day, we will each try our very best to see life from another angle.

President Obama, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Speaker of the House John Boehner will kick things off with a joint press conference, declaring their intention to spend the day teaching a class full of third graders.   The next time they talk about education cuts, they will have a much better idea what that will mean.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich will give up his leftist leanings for twenty-four hours and pass the time at a separatist ranch in Wyoming, made up of people who thought Waco was too permissive.  (Bonus: he can write a book about it, once the extraction team has gotten him out again.  Number 1 on the New York Times Best Seller List, I’m almost positive.)

Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, can trade places with a Social Security pensioner – he can find out what it’s like to live on a fixed income without campaign contributions from Citigroup, and the senior citizen will discover the difficulties of living with a faster depreciation rate on his corporate jet.

Glenn Beck and Michael Moore will be taken to a Buddhist temple, where they will both, for one day, be quiet.

Gloria Steinem and Michele Bachmann will spend the day together.  (Probably a best seller there too, for whichever one is left standing when it’s over.  My money’s on Gloria.)

All A-listers in Hollywood will spend the day waiting tables at Denny’s.  They probably all did this before they were famous, so it’ll be like a trip back in time.

Paris Hilton can while away the hours working a job.  Any job.

The CEOs of every company that benefited from the TARP program will trade places with the receptionists of their buildings.  The receptionists will run the companies for the day.  (Note to all receptionists: try to do something with the day besides crank-calling the CEO.  Warning to all CEOs: if the company stock does better than average on the Dow that day, the receptionists may be offered your job.)

Doctors can trade places with their patients.  Patients will not be paid for their services, but nothing is stopping them from making doctors wait 45 minutes past their appointment times, or from putting the stethoscope in a bag of ice before taking any doctor’s pulse.

Anyone who works for a bureaucracy (I know of whence I speak here, trust me) must spend the day trying to get something accomplished at another bureaucracy.  All personnel at the DMV are especially assigned to get a claim resolved at an HMO.  Good luck with that one.

Oh, all right, all right.  I’m kidding – or am I?  How much better a place would our world be if everyone was forced to look at life from another perspective?  I’m as guilty as the next person; we all get locked in a mindset that is shaped by our circumstances, our upbringing, our likes and our dislikes.  What would life be like if we sincerely tried to figure out where the person on the other side of our particular bargaining table was coming from?

Instead of seeing the moron (or whatever stronger word comes to mind) who just cut me off on the freeway, I can imagine someone who really, really has to go to the bathroom.  Conversely, the next time I am on the freeway after drinking my second grande soy latte, it might cross my mind that having an accident in the car is preferable to having an accident with the car.

Rather than seeing my former boss as a power-hungry rat who would sell his own grandmother for a promotion, maybe I can picture a man with low self-esteem, taking credit for anyone’s professional success in an attempt to imitate confidence.

I can look at my 450 square foot condo and see a place of that reeks of palatial comfort and solitude to a college student sharing an apartment with four other people so he can afford the rent.

Who knows, once I’ve picked up some momentum at it, I might even learn perspective on my own past.  Ask me about the last guy I went out with, I tend to concentrate on how completely and utterly forgettable he made me feel when he disappeared.  Maybe, with some distance from it, I can remember how beautiful he made me feel while he was actually here, instead.  (Eleanor Roosevelt’s brilliant observation that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent will be discussed another day.  She’s right, but that’s a different lesson.  Today I am learning perspective.  One thing at a time.)

One of my favorite things, during my times as an actor, is that idea of getting in someone else’s head.  I try my best to do it as a writer too, but playing a role in a show, saying words that aren’t yours and wearing clothes that someone else has picked out for you, may be the closest thing there is to actually being someone else.  The only way I could make the character come to life for an audience was to try to understand why she made the choices that she did.  Even the bad ones.  When he was playing the psycho-killer Hannibal Lecter, Anthony Hopkins said that he made the decision that this character thought he was fundamentally superior to other people.  That way, he could see the logic in Lecter’s actions.  If you believe that other people are a genuinely lesser species than you are, the basic principles of co-existence no longer apply.  Once those go bye-bye, a whole new world of depravity is open to you.  Conversely, if you concentrate on the things that make other people tick – if you even begin to wonder if they might have a rationale behind why they do what they do – you can no longer judge them as blindly as you did before.  Call it Anti-Lecterization.

The other brilliant thing I learned in acting school is that most people (Hannibals of the world aside) make what they feel are the best decisions for everyone, not just for themselves.  Even if they’re wrong, and the choices are the worst they could possibly make, chances are they thought they were doing the right thing in the moment.  Truthfully, that guy who disappeared on me may not have wanted desperately to get away from me.  He might well have thought he was doing me a favor by ridding me of him.

Perspective may not heal all wounds, but it can certainly teach us which wounds actually matter.  The Holocaust?  Yes.  An event that was inhumane, and needs to be remembered so that we can catch ourselves should we float that direction on the river of life again.  The time I got picked last for kickball in sixth grade?  Maybe not so much.

Every July 4th we celebrate America’s independence.  I vote the week after that, on July 11, we try some temporary independence from our own viewpoint.  Our world will be the better for it.  Rather than returning to our regular places secure in our own rightness, we might surprise ourselves by finding our ideas a little changed.

At the very least, the next time the butler and chauffeur get into an argument, we will all know how to handle the situation.

Kimberly values perspective.  She also values three-day weekends.  If the two should coincide, so much the better. 

Tags: Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, Eric Cantor, Glenn Beck, Gloria Steinem, Hannibal Lecter, John Boehner, Michael Moore, Michele Bachmann, Nancy Pelosi, Paris Hilton, perspective, Richie Rich