Author's name: Jos van Rosen

There is an Indian fable that illustrates the limitations of personal perspectives. The gist of the story is that there were six blind men who wanted to know what an elephant they had never seen before looked like. They approached an elephant and each one touched a part of it, forming their opinion based only on the part they had touched (one touched the elephant's body, another the tusk, another the foot, another the tail, etc.). When each of them gave their description, they found that they had no agreement on how they described the elephant. One said it looked like a snake, another a spear, another a pole, and so on. The moral of the story is that all our perspectives are valid, but no one has the complete picture. If we work together and combine our perspectives, we can get closer to the truth.