Perspective

This is my 3 year old’s toy tornado.

This is my silicone funnel that I bought at the 100 Yen store.

Perspective.

Perspectives are like opinions: everyone has one.

Like noses.

My perspective comes from a different view of life than yours does. My experiences factor into it.

My age, where I have lived and traveled.

The jobs I have worked, the people I have associated with.

My choices, my successes, my failures and my mistakes.

The societal standards for “normal.”

The media sources I pay attention to.

Those all factor in to my perspective equation.

Perspectives are molded over time, and it seems like sometimes they can become the opposite of what they once were.

We don’t even realize something is molding or shaping– let’s just be real here and say manipulating– them at times, when we aren’t paying attention.

One of my favorite phrases is, “Gain some perspective.”

How do we gain perspective? Is it something we can buy? Can we take it, or make it, or create it out of nothing?

How do we grab hold of perspective?

If I look at every person’s situation and assess they should have the same outcome I have experienced or heard about, then I have super limited perspective.

What has worked for my life isn’t going to work for everyone.

My mold, it won’t fit you.

Your mold, it will never fit my personality.

The ideas you value, they might not be what I value, and vice versa.

But, if we let that become an obstacle instead of exploring the differences and learning from one another, we lock ourselves into an unhealthy mindset.

We all have something we have passionately poured ourselves into. A job, a ministry, children, marriage, relationships, writing, artwork…surviving life…

We have a perspective and opinions on how best to do things.

When our perspective and opinions don’t fit someone else, we get frustrated, and criticize that they aren’t doing it “right.”

They are weak.

Idiots.

In reality they are unique.

That’s the way we should look at people, the perspective we should gain– grab hold of.

We should dig a little deeper, and learn from their perspective.

But. Then we would have to stop talking, and…

Listen.

And that’s a bigger, time-consuming challenge than we often want to take on.

So, we wallow in our perspective, and we criticize those who don’t do things our way.

We hold our outward view with the opinion that grabs our perspective, and we misjudge what we won’t take the time to explore.

We get lazy. We get presumptuous.

We get mean.

Then we become unapproachable.

Our perspective becomes the guide we follow for our lives and interactions with others.

It becomes our ineffectiveness and lack of communication catalyst.

We stop valuing individuality, and start embracing a conformist view.

Our perspective still changes us, while it remains the same. It molds us into someone we never thought we would choose to become.

It seems the mistake we often make  is to allow our perspective to become our guide.

Maybe, just maybe, learning from other people’s perspectives is one of the keys to walking in freedom.

Some people are afraid of perspectives that differ from theirs. They don’t want to look at things they disagree with, don’t want to find the heart in the middle of different.

They don’t want to care about the reasons.

It’s the middle road that takes us to the higher grounds of life, I believe, many times.

The middle ground is hearing the heartbeat beneath all the noise, emotion and turmoil.

Find the heartbeat, and you’ll grab hold of perspective.

That’s what God hears. He doesn’t look on the outward appearance and distance Himself from us. He doesn’t see the yuckiness, the clutter, the faults and failings– the sin– and turn away from us.

He figured out a way to dive into the ugliness, and retrieve the beauty.

He sent His own heartbeat in to find our heartbeat.

He embraced the human perspective, individually and collectively.

Shouldn’t we strive to do the same?