|
Week 107:
Remembering the Larger Picture
Walking across Central Park one morning, I happened to look up in the
sky and there in front of me, hanging over Belvedere Castle, was a full moon
in an early morning sky. It was completely unexpected and breathtaking, and
immediately drew my awareness to the vastness of space in which our planet
moves in its orbit around the sun. Immediately, my perspective moved beyond
the birds, trees, dogs, grass, and people in Central Park to include the sky,
the moon, the planets, the solar system. My perspective expanded beyond the
physical world in which I live to include the context within which the planet
lives.
This got me to thinking about how often we hold a perspective that focuses
on our immediate environment or circumstance, our own belief systems or life
experiences, and how transforming it can be to expand that perspective to include
more of the world of which we are part. That got me to thinking about what
it’s like to expand beyond our immediate interpretation of our experience,
beyond the immediate meaning we give to what we encounter as we move through
the day. So often, we decide that something means this or that based on what’s
right around us, and we can lose sight of the fact that we are part of a much
bigger system, a much bigger context.
I remember the story of the farmer who was distressed when someone stole
his horse. (Forgive me. I can never remember the details to these kinds of
stories, so I hope you’ll fill in the dramatic blanks that bring the
story more to life!) Then, the farmer’s son broke his leg running after
the person who stole the horse. Now the farmer had no horse and no son to help
him and was extremely upset at his bad fortune . . . until the military came
to take his son, who couldn’t fight in the war because of the broken
leg.
There are many stories like this one that demonstrate that what looks
like bad news initially may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. And so,
for this week’s experiment, notice what happens when you look at your
immediate experience with a view toward the larger context. This is sort of
like looking for the silver lining in a cloud, and it’s worth playing
with because of the way the focus of our attention tends to generate the mood
we experience as we move through the day. If you’re looking for the gift
in the challenge, your attitude is likely to be quite different from what arises
when challenge is seen as the enemy or as something that shouldn’t be
happening to you.
As always, give yourself lots of room to play with this and if you find
yourself having reactions to the idea that clouds often have silver linings,
notice that – acknowledge that there times when it’s next to impossible
to discover the gift in difficult experiences. You then have an opportunity
to honor how you’re feeling, which is always a gift in itself.
Click
Here for Other Weeks in This Series:
Home Page
|
