You can't properly see a two-dimensional object in three-dimensional space.

This is going to sound like complicated math, but it's not.

Let's say you're looking at a perfect circle, whether it's the opening to a jar, a coin on a table, or the bell of a trombone. Unless you're looking at it from a point exactly above the circle's center, what you see is actually an oval.

Don't believe me? Find something that's perfectly circular and take a picture of it. Then, just to exaggerate my point, go way off from looking straight down at the center of it and take another picture.

Print the pictures out, then take a piece of tracing paper, and trace the circles you took pictures of.

Unless you're in exactly the right spot, both of the tracings are going to be ovals. (If the first one looks like a circle, rotate the tracing paper a quarter turn and trace the circle again. That'll show you how much you're off.)

So how do you know that something is a circle?

You know because your brain adjusts for your perspective on the circle. It evaluates the information is has about the environment that the shape is in to draw conclusions about the shape.

You're probably wondering what this has to do with life. Well, actually, a lot.

Because a three-dimensional object is more complicated than a two-dimensional one. And a situation is more complicated than an object.

So how do you know what shape things are in? You know because just as with a shape, your brain adjusts for your perspective. And it's no accident that the same word--perspective--is used to mean both the angle and direction from which you view something and the particular frame of mind you have about something.

Your perspective establishes your expectation. But the solution is also a problem if you forget that you have a perspective. Then you only see things from your point of view, without considering that there are other ways to look at them.

The trick is to be aware of your perspective. And to be aware of others'. That way, you can understand why something that looks perfectly obvious to you might not be so clear to somebody else.