It was a bright Sunday morning as I walked out my back door onto my porch to enjoy my first cup of coffee. I don’t know what made me decide to walk down the two wooden steps that led to the back yard instead of sitting down on them. I think I was going to check the progress of some seedlings I had planted, or maybe I was going to pull some weeds. In either case, I ended up not returning to the porch to drink my coffee but rather sitting down on the single black metal chair I had relegated to the yard because I considered its design a bit too modern to blend with the wrought iron café set on my porch.

The first thing I noticed was that I was seated about two feet lower than normal, and my feet were touching the cool earth. As I sat there, facing southeast rather than directly east, as I usually do, I realized that this unremarkable shift in perspective led me to see so many things I hadn’t noticed before ‘though they had been there all along! The sky looked different, unobstructed by the crown of the very large tree that shaded the immediate area. A forsythia bush was home to some brown and yellow birds that heretofore I had only heard chirping away. As I looked around from this new spot, I noticed a bunch of small flowers poking out of the ground next to a low wall; and a fantastic paper hornets’ nest that I was shocked I hadn’t seen before, nestled high in the branches of a nearby tree. How had I missed it?

As I sat there drinking my coffee, I thought about how even a small shift in perspective can change the way we view our world, how it can make us see people, things, or events in a different light. Such a shift can be brought about by reading a book or an article that we wouldn’t usually read, listening to a different kind of music, or watching a show we don’t normally tune in to, if for no other reason than idle curiosity. We might come away with a single insight or deeper understanding as to why a person, group, or situation is the way it is. I’m not suggesting that it would completely change the way that we think or feel. But whenever we shift our perspective, even in the smallest way, we give ourselves a chance to expand the way we see, hear, and experience everything around us.

Live Spry!