One recent morning, on my way to my office, I walked through Central Park after a spring snow.  There wasn’t a lot of snow visible on the trees, but here and there I noticed that some branches had a thin layer of wet white and it was quite beautiful.  There’s an area in the park where I walk under a long row of cherry trees – one of my favorite places each morning – and I had a sudden impulse to turn around and look back along the pathway in the opposite direction.  Much to my amazement, all the trees had ribbons of white on their branches, and the trunks wore long aprons of white, as well.  The spring snow had come from the direction in which I walked, so I hadn’t been facing the side of the trees that got blanketed overnight. 

Suddenly facing  such an unexpected and beautiful scene behind me momentarily took my breath away.  All of a sudden, there was white decoration all around me, and it looked like a winter wonderland.  All the rest of the way to my office, I took in both views – the one in front of me and the one behind me.  They were completely different, which was such a delightful surprise.

This experience got me to thinking how we can so easily become stuck in a particular point of view, a particular perspective, familiar habits, as we plod or rush along on our way each day to do this or that activity or that task.  It also got me to wondering how many times I couldn’t even begin to know the delight and surprise awaiting me had I only turned around, mentally and/or physically, to see what I might be missing from another perspective.  I had assumed the view of the trees after the snow looked the same from all angles, and missed what I’m sure were some delicious vistas in the areas of the park where I hadn’t turned around to look at the view from another angle.

When The Gates were up in Central Park, I saw, and passed under, them everyday from ground level.  One afternoon toward the end of the installment, I happened to be in someone else’s office, at a business meeting, and looked out to see an entirely different view of The Gates.  I was on the 11th floor of a building near the south end of the park, in an office overlooking the bottom of the park, near 59th Street.  The view of The Gates was completely new to me.  From the office windows, I saw orange ribbons of fluttering fabric wending this way and that on the park walkways.  What had become familiar in a particular way was, all of a sudden, brand new.  It was another experience of suddenly discovering a different perspective on something I had come to know well.

For this week’s experiment, I invite you to take time to literally and physically look at your environment from more than one perspective.  If you always leave the house in a particular way, take a particular route, and see the same view, notice what happens if you take the time to look behind you, or around in ways that you don’t normally bother to do.  Or, what happens if you decide to take a route that you haven’t taken in a long time – or ever?  If your furniture has been arranged in a particular way for a long time, walk to another area of the room and look at things from there.  Notice if you see anything different in the familiar objects you have around you when you look at them from another place in the room.  If you go out into nature at a particular time of the day each day, choose a different time of day and notice how things look in a different light.  With all these various ways of exploring a new point of view, allow yourself to be curious about what you might see or experience that’s always been there but outside your awareness before now.

Most importantly, please be playful with this experiment and be curious about what you’ll discover as you take the time to look at things in a new way, from a new point of view.