Change in Perspective

Funny how perspectives can change in an instant.

One phone call, one e-mail, one conversation - and then the entire frame of reference shifts.

I guess it should not surprise me that this is the case - after all, I have been around long enough to know that such things can occur.  Good heavens, such things have actually occurred to me from time to time:  learning you will have a child.  Learning that your job has suddenly disappeared.

I guess where the surprise comes in is that more and more, it happens in the midst of life.  Not when you are expecting it or even when you think of things as being at a crossroads but simply occurring where we are, meandering through daily life.  The perspective changes, and suddenly everything that you have been considering or planning with goes completely to the winds.

In a way I suppose this is good - it means that we are constantly being brought back to what is truly important, not what we think is important.  This is often a problem for me - I let my life become too much about me and my life and what is going on in my head and not the bigger picture of what is going on in the lives of others - sometimes that is as much or more important as what is going on in mine, although I am often unwilling to acknowledge it.

But the one thing that must happen for the change in perspective to really work is that I must acknowledge it for what it is - not a minor interruption or a passing idea but a true change, that turn in the road before and after which nothing is completely the same.  To do anything less is deprive the change of what it is really saying and to then continue to operate in a world that is no longer completely true.

Perspectives can change instantly.  But we are the ones responsible for taking that change and incorporating it into our lives.