People often talk about how they or more often others change their perspective. Usually, they mean a readjustment of our mental outlook more than an actual change in the angle from which we look at something.
I’m here to tell you to consider physically changing your perspective from time to time.
Like a lot of guys my age, my back is not what it once was. I am still pretty strong by most standards, but when I put that strength to the test my back lets me know. Sometimes it lets me know if I do something as simple as bending the wrong way to pick up one of my kid’s toys.
It was picking up a toy that recently sent my back into a spasm. This made the ordinary task of leaning over the sink to wash dishes, something already complicated by my height and this world of low counter tops I live in, an exercise in agony.
Not knowing what else to do, I pulled a chair into the kitchen and sat down to wash the dishes. What a difference it made!
It was not much of a difference for my back, which still tormented me but had dulled due to a welcome distraction. It was the difference in viewpoint that riveted me.
Standing in my familiar spot, looking out the kitchen window with that bored 1,000 yard stare of dishwashers everywhere, I would see what I always saw: the backyard, the shed, some pecan trees and a disused playhouse the kids ignored these days.
Sitting down, I had to look upward somewhat to see out the window, which revealed a lot of things I had been missing: the interlocking branches above the backyard, clouds of a hundred shapes and sizes, the contrails of planes and the back and forth squabbling of a dozen different types of birds.
An entire show had been going on above my head outside and all it took was a literal change in perspective for me to see it. I haven’t paid attention to what is going on in the sky so much since I was a kid.
In the branches overhead entire dramas were being played out. With cloud castles for a backdrop, mockingbirds, woodpeckers and other birds jockeyed for territory. Querulous crows and the rare red-shouldered hawk were usually made to feel unwelcome by everyone else in the neighborhood. Dragonflies and beetles zoomed along with almost mechanical purpose and precision.
The branches themselves would sway and dance in high winds, fluttering their leaves like fans, and those too stubborn to bend would break and tumble from the heights.
After a week of this, my mind began to ascribe names, personalities and backstories to the various elements of my new view. I entertained myself with tales of the “Kingdom of the Air” while I scrubbed some loathsomely familiar pot or pan for the hundredth time. It was fun.
I won’t say this change in perspective changed my life, but it did make my back hurt a little less and doing the dishes became a little less like drudgery.
The question becomes how long will it take for this new perspective to become run of the mill and commonplace to me? And will standing back up to wash the dishes make that boring old shed seem brand new again?
•Greg O’Driscoll is a staff writer for The Blackshear Times.
