Perspective

Just the smallest shift can change your perspective.

Recently I decided to move my computer a little. My computer, once squarely in front of the window, is now off to the side.

I have a different view from the same window.

Before the move, I looked straight into a small glen, a part of the cattle pasture. Brush and pine trees frame the space, and daily I’d watch the deer pass back and forth, from brush to pine, their noses to the ground eating grass as they went.

I don’t see that anymore. Now I see a grove of oak trees, and the fields stretching out towards the two-lane road that runs by my house. I see the cedar trees growing tall, majestic and larger every year. And I see a rose bush, presently leafless and dead-looking, though with this warm weather it’s liable to bud just any time.

Each day I watch the view out my window.

Some mornings loom gray and ugly, the clouds and dark sky proclaiming a rainy, windy day. Other mornings, the dustiness of night is suddenly brushed away by pink as the sun rises behind me. 

Time passes, the shadows change, the daylight flicks over the house, the eaves of the roof afford shade or not. In evening the sun shines golden over the mountains I love so much. The rays reflect the browns of the tree branches, the yellows of the hibernating grasses.

I see squirrels, groundhogs, an occasional fox, the deer I may as well call my pets. The cattle, too, meander past. Sometimes I stop working to watch the calves kick up their heels, running delightedly up and down the hillside.

I envy those calves (until I remember their ultimate future).

If I raise my window, I also change my perspective. Suddenly, instead of the quiet of my house, I hear traffic. Momma cows call to little ones. Crows caw. A horn blasts in the distance, maybe a siren.  Things are happening all around me, even if I can’t see them.

In the mornings, I sometimes drink my hot tea over the kitchen sink so I can watch the sun rise. Today it was brilliant pink, splashed in between clouds. The dark skyline of nude trees seemed to reach up to grab the light, so breathtaking was the magnificence of the day.

It's just March. There is still time to think of this as a new year, time to seek out new perspectives, new windows, new light.  Do we bask in the sunrise, or rejoice in the sunset? Should we keep the same viewpoint and never bother to change our minds? Do we stick with the tried and true and never see the critters roaming just a stone’s throw away?

I opt to look. Even the fat, lumbering groundhog is too cute to miss.

Maybe it's time for a new perspective. Not the grand, resolution-style overhaul we promise ourselves every January and abandon by February. Maybe we need just a small shift, the way moving a computer a few inches can open up an entirely different world outside the same window. Listen a little longer before you speak. Let someone finish their sentence before you're already forming your reply.

Sometimes the most important thing a person says comes at the very end, quiet and almost offhand, and you'd have missed it entirely if you'd stopped listening too soon.

The new view doesn't have to be dramatic. It might be a different road home, an unfamiliar store, a hand held when you'd normally just walk side by side. It might be three small words said out loud to someone who already knows you mean them.

Look out the window every once in a while. You never know what's passing by.

*A version of this ran in The Fincastle Herald in 2005. It's been revised.*