Growing Your Perspective-3: Inhabiting Your Place in the Universe
My sister went for a balloon ride for her 50th birthday. I’ve only experienced balloons from the ground; I’ve never ridden in one. So I can only imagine the view from the balloon.
When you experience something new, or experience something familiar from another point of view, it changes you. Sometimes, the shift is barely perceptible.
Other times it changes you in big ways. Going to college, joining the military, becoming a parent all come to mind. Those kind of experiences can give you a huge shift in perspective.
As we grow older and hopefully, wiser, we begin to get more comfortable with who we are and what we believe.
It would be so easy at this point to fall into the trap of thinking we’ve reached the end of the perspective journey.
This is where it gets good! This is where we can look at who we are and where we’ve been in life. We can assess what we’ve learned. We can look at what we may have missed out on, where our blind spots are.
While there will still be surprises, it’s not like it was when you were young and hadn’t experienced anything. Then, everything was new and surprising.
The beauty of growing into your place in the universe, is that at this point in your life, you can choose the experiences that you want to have so you can grow more aware, more compassionate, more grateful.
You can choose small things like volunteering at a nursing home, just talking with the residents and listening to their stories (which can be endlessly fascinating.)
Get a group of friends together and volunteer a night a month in a homeless shelter. Get to know some of the people there.
You can choose big things like traveling to another part of the world and immersing yourself in a new culture.
Plant a vegetable garden. You may know where your food comes from, but have you ever grown it yourself?
We started raising cows and pigs to put in the freezer years ago. I had no idea how much work it was. We had to start from scratch-build a barn, fence in a pasture, put up various gates, find a vet that made barn calls.
It was well worth it for the quality and price of the meat (minus the cost of all the stuff we needed to start), but a real eye-opener.
As long as I’m alive, I want to keep learning, growing, and revising my beliefs. That’s my perspective, for now!
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Have you had any good perspective-changing experiences you could share with us? Feel free to put them in the comments.
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Totally agree! I’m taking a couple of on line classes to prepare to open an on line business- Etsy shop 🙂 computers don’t frighten me… But they can take a few passes before it makes sense…
Amen! My biggest hurdle in this endeavor is the technology…but I’m hanging in there. When you get your shop set up, send me a link please. I know first hand what awesome stuff you make!
I often think of perspective in terms of point of view. Even though they are not quite the same thing, it helps me distinguish between an over-all perspective, or birds eye view, and an individual perspective, or worms eye view. Right now I happen to be caught up in my worms eye view perspective where I tend to block out the big stuff in order to concentrate on matters at hand.
For example, I’ve been hired to work as the art specialist at a summer camp specifically for children with cancer and their siblings. This is something I hold dear to my heart. My 26 yr old son was a patient at St Jude Children’s research Hospital at the age of 2-1/2. I learned to re-adjust my perspective then to deal with what he and his sisters were going through. He was sick, no doubt, and going through a lot that he didn’t understand. But his sisters perspective was different. What they saw was mom was always with their brother. They got sent off to stay with friends often as I dealt with doctor appointments, phone calls, research, and worry.
Having this in my bag of experiences gives me a different perspective than many of my soon to be co workers. I can understand how siblings can be jealous of the sick child, how their behavior can change, why they sometimes act out for the attention they miss. As a mother I understand that even though it’s hard, and something you wouldn’t normally do, you have to prioritize your time differently. You have to pay one child more attention than the others.
Because of this shift in my perspective, I have locked myself into my worms eye view mode. I have spent months putting my art program together, finding projects, researching advancements in medical care in the last 20+years, and reading up on articles on the psychological effects of major illnesses on families.
I want our cancer campers to have so much fun in art that they don’t even realize they are learning to see themselves as who they are as an individual, not as a patient. I want our sibling campers to have so much fun that they don’t realize they are learning who they are outside of being the brother or sister of someone who has cancer. I want our camper parents to see their children so excited to go to camp that they can sit back and breath, relax, and be confident that their children are so well taken care of that they need not worry for a few hours each day.
That’s a very purposeful perspective you are able to shift into because of your personal experience. That’s one of the reasons I love to listen to each person’s story. There is so much to be gained in perspective, understanding, and connection. Thanks for sharing that with us!
Lou, are you sure you didn’t get a degree in psycology ( yes even at 67 my spelling is terrible) this is a side of you I hadn’t seen before. God bless the kids you get at camp they got the BEST teacher.
Great writing and thoughts Carol. I always love anything new and new perspective! When I get to retire like you I know for a fact some volunteer work will feed my soul. I look forward to that very much. In the meantime I’m happy with my little corner of the world. Right now I’m trying to learn how to keep the quick witted chipmunks out of my flower pots. I need to gain some new perspective into their world and figure out how to stop them! They are making a mess of my freshly planted pots and getting dirt everywhere! This is a new problem. Haha! Have a great week!
Susan
Those chipmunks are like teenage boys…must have fooooood! I’m glad you’re enjoying your little corner of the world. We’re doing the outdoor spring cleaning right now and enjoying the fresh air as well! Send those little chipmunks to my place-I love those furry little rascals! We’ll let them stay in the pasture.
You have a lovely week yourself! ❤️