Why It's So Hard To See Outside Of Our Perspective

Why is it so hard to see beyond our own perspective? One of the greatest tragedies in human civilization is our narrow-sightedness. Often, we can't or choose not to look beyond what we see with our own eyes. We develop a myopia that limits our field of vision. As a result, our future becomes limited. In the Western world, it's even harder to step out of your own POV sometimes and see things from another person's lens. We celebrate the individual in U.S. culture. It's no secret. But often, we need a stronger sense of how other people see the same things in order to survive. After all, that's how a community grows.

Street dancing is like any other tribe. We have traditions, rituals, habits, language, and expectations of each other. We gather. We fight. We celebrate. But the classic anthropologist will see how self-limiting we are. Many of us retreat into the dance scene in order to escape our daily lives and responsibilities. Our dance peers become our confidantes and surrogate families. This is all fine. But what's alarming is when we close ourselves off to the rest of the world. We can easily develop a mentality that the rest of the world just doesn't understand us. We can tell ourselves they never will empathize with our situation. It becomes an "us vs. them" mentality.

We're losing this battle. A new generation of street dancers have emerged and their only role models are the ones around them at practice sessions and cyphers. They have no mentors who are showing them the beauty of growing in their artform while experiencing life outside our culture. These young people need that kind of balanced guidance. In the end, you have to ask yourself - does dancing solve all of your problems? That kind of question will elicit thousands of responses. But it's an important one to ask and to evaluate your answer to it.

It's frustrating. Very, very frustrating. It takes a certain madness to see beyond what you can with your own eyes. After all, it's easy to stay within your comfort zone. That's what we know and sometimes that's enough for most people. But if we're ever going to see radical change in our community, we need dreamers who dare to risk. If you are part of the street dance world, can you imagine a future when we are not still complaining about the same issues that plague us today? Can you imagine proactive men and women tackling these issues instead of standing by on the sidelines? We are in desperate need of people who have vision and act on it.