Perspective is different for everyone. If you are a child, you see things very differently than your parents do. If you are single, you perceive relationships and interactions from a different angle than do couples. I had a young woman bring this simple truth home to me when we were discussing a young couple she had recommended to me. She told me several weeks earlier that I needed to meet them and that they would be such a huge bonus to our organization. She described their physical features so I could find them on my own. She said the young man was tall. I looked everywhere for this tall, young man and his wife. After three meeting with no success I asked my young friend if she could point them out. She said she could but it was too late as they were joining another group. When she pointed them out, I was shocked. He wasn’t tall, probably about 5’8”. I exclaimed that I never would have taken them for the couple as I was looking for someone tall about 6’3” or more. I said he’s short. All 5’1” of her looked at me, shrugged her shoulders and said everyone is tall to me.
Keeping a right perspective on life isn’t easy. We get too serious over issues that are fleeting in the grand scheme of things. Recently friends of ours were shaken by the news of their son breaking his neck playing a sport. When tragedy strikes you, life perspective changes. Suddenly the issues like picking up your socks off the floor become non-issues in life and death situations. The value of the person who is suffering rises to the forefront. You think differently and sometimes remorsefully about the way you have acted towards them.
I experienced the impact of losing perspective in a relationship when the man I was snipping about suddenly died of a heart attack at 41. Wow! That shook me! Here we had been arguing about semantics and it had separated us and had broken our relationship. Then he was dead. He left a wife and 3 children from 8 to 14 years of age. What a waste on my part! Stupid words that seemed so important now seemed totally petty in light of his passing.
Tragedy flips your world upside down. What is really of value hurdles to confront us all. Our perspective changes in response.
So, can our perspective be recalibrated without tragedy? Can we shift our outlook on life? Can we recognise when we have gone back to non-issues or will we wallow in them until something tragic comes near our home?
I think we can. It means looking at our values, deciding what is really important to us and laying the other irrelevant issues aside.
(image courtesy of Mantas Ruzveltas/FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
Keeping a right perspective on life isn’t easy. We get too serious over issues that are fleeting in the grand scheme of things. Recently friends of ours were shaken by the news of their son breaking his neck playing a sport. When tragedy strikes you, life perspective changes. Suddenly the issues like picking up your socks off the floor become non-issues in life and death situations. The value of the person who is suffering rises to the forefront. You think differently and sometimes remorsefully about the way you have acted towards them.
I experienced the impact of losing perspective in a relationship when the man I was snipping about suddenly died of a heart attack at 41. Wow! That shook me! Here we had been arguing about semantics and it had separated us and had broken our relationship. Then he was dead. He left a wife and 3 children from 8 to 14 years of age. What a waste on my part! Stupid words that seemed so important now seemed totally petty in light of his passing.
Tragedy flips your world upside down. What is really of value hurdles to confront us all. Our perspective changes in response.
So, can our perspective be recalibrated without tragedy? Can we shift our outlook on life? Can we recognise when we have gone back to non-issues or will we wallow in them until something tragic comes near our home?
I think we can. It means looking at our values, deciding what is really important to us and laying the other irrelevant issues aside.
(image courtesy of Mantas Ruzveltas/FreeDigitalPhotos.net)
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