Adding To Perspective

Here's a metaphor for all of you. Perhaps first a little background. In the summer of 2005 I was lucky enough to go to the Grand Canyon with my sister father. It was a near spiritual experience for me, lots of time to think. Time to just get away and reflect on things. When we claimed out of the canyon, up the North Rim, the trail leads past a very flat rock that looks out on the path you have just traveled. Being at the end of the final set of switchbacks, you can see the first bend in the path all the way up the side to where you are, a view that was impossible while climbing up. I thought this is a useful metaphor for perspective.

At the Beginning of the day, all you can see is a goal, a final destination, looming, sometimes daunting, in front of you miles away. You can also only see the path in front of you, maybe a fork in the path. Either way, you are limited to the foreseeable future. As you get into the day, and the sun rises, it gets hotter, and the perspective changes. You fail to see the promise felt at the beginning of the day, too embroiled in the struggle and the present, hiking up switchbacks, stopping for water or food. The journey is proceeding, but based on the present trials. Even if you can see what lays behind you, it isn't fully appriciated. Finally, at the end of the journey, it dawns on you. You understand the Beauty of what you have just accomplished, of the scenery that was there all the time.

If we want to get away from this romantic vision of a journey, it can be viewed in this way: The trials seem paltry when viewed from the outside. Experience always seems dire because it is more real than extrapolation. Thinking about the journey that is to come or has passed is not nearly as real as the experience at hand.

Perspective works in both ways. It can put experience in its place, as not that important in the overall picture. On the other hand however, it can cloud the present feelings in a false sense of grand meaning. Either way, perspective is interwoven into every memory and thought that we have.