A Thought About Perspective

When you are a kid, birthdays are events. They are something to celebrate and look forward to. When you get older, they cease to feel important. They simply mark the passage of time. They only have the significance we choose to impart on them.

I've heard it said that life is a collection of moments. A collection of events. I prefer to think that life is the time between those events. That time is when we chose how to perceive and interpret those events. Life is the time you spend waiting in a dentist's office for your name to be called. The act of getting your teeth cleaned does not have a large impact on your life. However, the time you spend in the waiting room, thinking about your day, your week, your future - that time shapes your life. Those free moments when we are driving to work, or jogging, sitting on the toilet are when we reflect on all the events we consider to have been important in shaping our lives.

But like birthdays, our perception of other events changes over time - as our emotions change, as our memories fade... as we have more time to see things in perspective. The older we get, the more events we can experience and compare to other events. Suddenly, getting a new videogame is no longer the best thing that has ever happened. Getting snubbed in the lunchroom is no longer the worst. And sometimes, events occur that give us a profound clarity about things that happened in the past. People often refer to these events as 'turning points.'

But the events are not the catalyst. What turns us is how we react to those events. We are not robots that record our experiences in one long column that adds up to some definitive sum. We interpret and reappraise and second-guess and predict and regret and hope and deny. We think, therefor we are.

Which explains why you're reading this instead of doing work or kissing someone or accomplishing something. But just because the quiet, thoughtful moments are the ones that shape our lives, that doesn't mean you should wallow in them. Take them in, consider their significance, and then go out and live life.