Perspective

This winter season has been filled with a lot of news- news that many have found to be upsetting.  I have talked to countless people who have been on a roller coaster ride of emotions who are trying to find their grounding. It has also been quite amazing to see people wake up to what is happening around them. As M Scott Peck famously noted, "Sometimes good things have to fall apart for better things to fall together."  With this perspective, our opportunity now is to take all of this concentrated energy we've given to politics and re-focus it on all the places that need our hopeful attention.  And, in the midst of this new energy and activity, I'm also reminded that we still have a life to live.  We have jobs to attend to, homes to keep up, children to get to school and groceries to be gathered.  

The question we have to keep asking ourselves is where do we find perspective?  For good work to continue, it is essential to find perspective that is bigger than the moment.  That is part of the work that I do with my clients when they come to me in the midst of a crisis. Before we do active work on the presenting problem, we start with the person and help them get grounded by teasing out positive tethering points. We can gain perspective by reminding our hearts of all the people who care about us.  Sometimes it comes by reminding ourselves of gratitudes and keeping them in our memory. Sometimes perspective comes by getting into our bodies through exercise or breathing.  And once again, I'm reminded that just getting outside into nature can align the heart, mind and body in a way that yields a calming perspective. Because it is only with a grounded perspective that we can be ready for the hard work that comes after the crisis.  

I find that being outside is where I need to be to restore myself.  I soak in the quiet and spend  time watching the movements of nature around me.  Last winter, I was struck by how the cold, barren winter serves as a metaphor for how we may feel dead, but be pregnant with a newness that, like spring, is just around the corner. Right now,  I am reflecting on how nature offers perspective in a way that calms us, grounds us and remind us of our center.  Needing some perspective? Consider slipping on your coat and finding your way outside into the landscape that is bigger than your despair, and the crisis of the moment. 

To contemplate -
​Wendell Berry wrote a beautiful poem that I have found myself reading over and over again this past weeks and months.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

When despair for the world
grows in me
and I wake in the night 
at the least sound 
in fear of what my life 
​and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down
where the wood drake
rests in his beauty
on the water,
and the great heron feeds. 
I come into the
peace of wild things 
who do not tax their lives
with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence
of still water.
And I feel above me 
the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the
grace of the world,
and am free.   
- Wendell Berry