Do we see the big picture?

Recently, two of my close friends were in deep depression - As always, I used my solid consoling skills and made them feel better over weeks. Both of them are housewives married to their loves, have children, totally committed to their families and are convinced of what they are doing for the family. They cook, raise children and look after their husbands well.

The first lady is bugged up of the same life everyday. In her own words, it is just the same stuff that she does everyday. No change at all. She is connected to a few people and at times she wishes that she were to be them or do things that they're doing. But she cannot because of the commitments and constraints. At times, she's too hard on kids for not listenening to her. So many things make her feel sad. I asked her what would make her happy and her reply was I do not know
The second is a young lady who has just stepped into motherhood. In her words, she understands her husband well and always working for the better of the family. But she's not getting what she wants in return. It is simple love and empathy that she expects from her husband which she thinks, is deprived of. She's good but the world is cruel to her.

I had to highlight in bold to both of them their brighter sides of life, give instances and cite opportunities on how they can get into a lot of excitement and eventually realise that life is simply beautiful (which I am still in process of assimilating and implementing for my own self).

Of course, they had different problems but I could see one tangible commonality in both of them:
They see only what they want to see in the world around - they have a terribly narrow vision on what they want to see in people. They see only that part which interests them and the rest is simply out of focus.
The chances are naturally high to stumble on framing a wrong opinion because they see only a part and not the whole. The big picture is completely lost! To cite an example, if I am fanatic about reading newspapers every morning (which I am definitely not:-) and the gentleman next door doesn't even subscribe them, for me he becomes a dull guy though he's a rocket scientist by profession. And all this happens in a split second - it is so fast and probably our neurons fire the same way everytime, the moment it sees a trend - just like antivirus routers.

Putting into the right words, our (allow me to extrapolate and make this generic) love towards our children, parents, friends and whomsoever connected is as I said - very narrow which has a defined scope and strict boundary - it is conditional. There are inumerable instances of this very same loophole in our everyday life. When I started interviewing people for my company, 3 years back, I initially used to probe candidates with stuff that interests me rather than getting to know the candidate's strengths and then relate them to our needs and organizational standards. It was not even 10 candidates for about a month, I started hating interviews and looked for excuses to avoid them. But shortly I realized that I am being very mean and unfair to the candidates to impose conditions and topics that I am a interested in - suddenly interviewing became a pleasure! Every interview was a great opportunity to know people and in fact I was recognized for being the most active participant in recruitment for that year having interviewed a whooping 98 candidates. This for me has always been a good reference and am happy that it has a documented evidence - my hours are booked in a system with date, candidate name and feedback too!

Next time we meet the guy next door/colleague/wife/children/husband - let's make a consious effort not to stereotype them.