Springtime Perspectives

I had a blog post nearly finished — one I'd been planning for weeks, timed perfectly for the first day of Spring. It was going to be funny. A greatest-hits reel of the last 15 months: loading our family into a 34-foot RV I had absolutely no business driving, hauling everyone across the country, and somehow surviving the many opportunities for both humor and catastrophe that followed. The thesis was going to be that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger. And I do believe that. But the humor? It's still a little too fresh. Laughing at it right now feels like enjoying a great stand-up set while pulling out your own stitches. So that post will have to wait. Today we're talking about something else.

Today is about new beginnings. New perspectives — or possibly about accepting that perspective can be hazy and impaired, much like my view through this window, currently covered in raindrops. Some things seem much bigger or closer than they actually are. Some are twisted in strange ways. That's how life is. That's how relationships are. When

there's chaos — wind and rain — the view gets distorted.

Adding to the trouble is the simple fact that we each only have our own perspective. And if we accept that singular viewpoint as definitive truth, we can sometimes be wrong. Really wrong. So it benefits us to seek outside perspectives — to enlist the judgment of our community when we have decisions to make or challenges to face. This is also why it's worth building community that includes a wide variety of backgrounds and viewpoints. Think of it like an ecosystem, where every organism has its own strengths and contributes in its own way to the larger system.

People sometimes forget this. We hold so tight to family that we don't let anyone else in — or worse, we push family members away for seeing things differently. We lose sight of the larger picture, and in doing so limit not just our thinking, but our own potential.

We also get stuck geographically. We move through our routines, and as long as those are going reasonably well, we don't concern ourselves with the greater world. We forget that a trophic cascade can be a breathtaking thing — but so can systemic failure. And no matter where it begins, we will all eventually feel the effects. So we must participate in making the greater system better, not just our own little corner of it.

Expand your perspective. Talk to people outside your usual crowd. You don't need to be besties with everyone, but respect their experiences and honor their perspective. As the saying goes, everyone you meet has something to teach you.

Happy Equinox!