Peering Through Windows

There once was an old man who had four grown children who were always fighting. Shouting! Arguing! Whenever they came to visit, his little one-room cabin was filled with quarrels and insults. "You're so stupid!" his oldest son would shout. "You just don't get it!" his daughter would yell. "If you'd just face the facts!" his younger son would retort. "I'm sick of all of you!" his younger daughter would rage. On and on, until the poor man would sit with his head in his hands, as their anger swirled around him.

One night, when their quarreling was worse than ever, he had an idea. He stood up, and his children fell silent in surprise. "Come with me," he said, and he opened the door and strode out of the house. One by one they stood and followed him, gathering around him in the darkness.

"Now," he said, "I want you to do something for me. Each of you go and stand at one of the windows. Look in - look carefully, until I call you back."

They were puzzled, but they loved their father, so they did as he asked, each walking around the sides of the house and choosing a window. Then they stood and waited, looking into the brightly lit room. The minutes ticked by, and they felt the warm summer air on their faces. They felt their anger cool a little. Finally they heard their father calling them, and they walked slowly back into the house.

They all sat down, a little ashamed of their quarreling, and there was a long silence.

"Now," the father said quietly, "tell me what you saw." He turned to his older son.

"Well, I saw the room, of course," the young man said. "I was looking across at the kitchen alcove, and I saw the sink and the stove."

"Fine." He turned to his older daughter. "What did you see?"

She cleared her throat. "Well, I saw the table with our chairs around it, and your desk in the corner."

"Good. And you?" His younger daughter shrugged. "I saw your bed and your dresser, and the painting on the wall."

He turned to his youngest child, who answered, "I saw the front door, and the coat rack beside it, and the bookcase."

The father looked at each of them in turn. "None have you have mentioned one other thing. You each saw, across from you, your brother or sister, looking in as well, and seeing the part of the room you could not see." They looked at each other, and then down at the floor.

"Please. Please think carefully about what I'm saying. Each of you, looking in, only saw a part of the whole."

They each looked at his earnest face. "It's all right, you know. It's how we're made. We're each seeing things through our own window, and we only see one part of the truth. But if we don't listen to each other, find out what we all see, we'll never know the whole picture."

I think his children took that lesson to heart that night, for things changed after that. They each began to listen a little more, to try to learn from each other more, and there was less shouting and more laughter in that little home, and slowly they became a family again.

Nowadays it seems like so many of us are shouting, standing at our personal windows, sure that we're right and trying to convince everyone else to listen. Maybe, just maybe, we need to try to listen more to the people looking in at us from the other side. We might just learn something.