Perspective

This parable has a lot of different variations but, I'm just going to go with the version that says:

There was an elephant and three blind men. The blind men had never seen or known an elephant before. So each agreed to examine the elephant to see what they thought it could be...

The first blind man felt the elephant's trunk and ran his fingers over the long, smooth, curving muscles. He jumped back in fear for he thought it must be kin to a python. The second blind man laid his hands on the elephant's ear and smiled to himself for he thought he was holding the wing of some exotic bird. The third blind man picked up the end of the elephant's bristlelike tail and frowned in puzzlement because he thought he'd picked up a bottle brush!

Dean Koontz is an interesting writer. He lives on the fringe of where I don't like to go and yet makes any number of dead on observations about the human condition. His comment on the above was:

"So it is with any experience that human beings share. Each participant perceives it in a different way and takes from it a different lesson than do his or her compatriots."

Yup.

That sounds about right.
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