"P" is for Perspective

 "Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them." - Epictetus

When life overwhelms or the hurts and fears begin to mount, when you finally feel ready to analyze a moment/relationship in your life to see what it tells you about yourself, remember to withdraw a bit and be still. The mind is not unlike a teacup; it rattles easily. At these moments I think we are all simply feeling the limitations of our "humanness". In short, your perceptions have taken over.

Perception is defined in two ways:

1. The ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses.
2. The state of being or process of becoming aware of something in such a way

Call me a nerd (and many of you will) but I find it fascinating that the very word is defined in two ways: in a physical sense (becoming aware of something via the five senses) and in a sort of spiritual sense (the "process" of becoming aware of "something" in such "a way"). Perception is how we see the world, up close, through the singular paradigm of our own existence.

But I think God expects more from us than to simply take our own existence and create an army of one. It's why so many of us end up at war with ourselves. In the Bible, time and again, we get examples of people forced out of their own limited views of the world and into a greater perspective (Moses, Noah, David, and Solomon to name a few).


Perspective is defined in five ways, I have chosen these two:

1) The state of existing in space before the eye.

2) The state of one's ideas, the facts known to one, etc., in having a meaningful interrelationship.

Call me a head case (and many of you will) but I find it maddening that I have been created to take what I see in this existence and process it, through my thoughts and ideas, my memories and experiences, my neurosis and paranoia's, until I must (by mental default) form an idea or opinion of "how things are" vs "how things appear". I have spent most of my life getting this wrong.

Perception without perspective is a wild gamble. Many of us live our lives at this particular crap table every day, rolling the dice. It's easier to just view the world how we see things and everyone else can  kiss off. But by viewing the world only through our own lenses we often can get a distorted picture of life and, by default, stunt our growth both as human and - more importantly - spiritual beings.