A Matter of Perspective

Our human minds are designed to compare one thing to another.   This wonderful capacity allows us to buy groceries and build electric cars but also leads us into a near constant state of dissatisfaction. We often wish that things were different: It’s too hot or too cold. I’m too anxious or too tired. Our team should have won the game. Our woman should have won the election.

Since we can imagine that things could be or should be different, we often think that someone must have done something wrong to get us here. It might be us or it might be others, but someone is to blame. We can spend a lot of time looking to find who is at fault. Or we spend a lot of time wishing that things were different—regretting the past and complaining about the present.

But what if this is it? What is our current situation (inside and outside) is not a mistake that should have been avoided, but it is exactly where we need to be? What if our whole lives have led up to this moment and if we are the ones who have what is needed to meet the current challenges? Or what if the conditions around us are exactly what we need to wake up to our birthright of freedom and power?

From a scientific perspective, these are not testable hypotheses. We cannot ‘prove’ that things, as they are, are an opportunity rather than a trial. But we appear to have the freedom to approach them from either perspective – and many others as well.

Whatever perspective we hold on our current situation, it probably serves us well at least to be aware of it: What is the story I am telling about where I am now? Without being aware that our perception of any situation includes some creative assumptions, we experience our personal view as fixed reality rather than one of many possibilities.

As we become aware of the multiple views that are inherent in any given situation, we can sometimes choose new possibilities for ourselves and for the world we live in. We will continue to struggle and complain, but maybe we can find more ease and be more effective in our actions as well.