Archives for posts with tag: point of view

Updating My Point of View

October 24, 2020 //

The evening light trickles into the studio through small gaps in the semi-sheer fabric blinds, along the sides, and through small holes for the strings. I’m sipping water, thinking about making dinner, and considering the election – and Giftmas. The winter holiday season is so close at hand. So is the election. (Although, to be fair, I live in Oregon, and I voted last week. Done.)

My perspective on some elements of the winter holidays may have changed just a bit with the move into our own home… I find myself pleasantly disposed towards lawn ornaments, and outdoor lights. lol It’s been… literally never, that I could realistically consider anything fanciful or elaborate for outdoor holiday lights or decor. One downside of apartment living was that the lawn and exterior details simply aren’t part of the rental, in my limited experience. So… none of that, then. Or… if at all, quite likely very little.

I found myself stalled in a big box hardware store the other day, gazing wide-eyed at… lawn ornaments. Yep. Giftmas has already arrived in retail purgatory, and it is lit. LOL

…Or…I could wait for actual deer to stray onto the front lawn. It’s a thing they do. 🙂

The point though, to my musings this afternoon, as the sun drops low, isn’t about the actual lawn ornaments, or their cost, or whether it is too soon for holiday décor to dominate my thoughts… or even the upcoming election, which is already wholly irrelevant to me for now, having already voted; it’s about the change of perspective. The altered point of view. The fact of it – and also how little it really took to find myself experiencing a change in thinking.

In this particular instance, I did not seek or manufacture my change of thinking. My point of view has been altered quite literally because my point of view is altered; I moved. What I see outside my windows each day is different. The door I see as I walk up to the front door is a different door, opening onto a different way of experiencing my life. New context. New environment. New challenges. Change is. It hasn’t all been effortless joy, fun times, or relaxed – or relaxing. The light switches are not where I expect them to be. (Some of the challenges are frankly quite silly, and very individual.) There has been a lot of work. A lot of upheaval – which is difficult even when I welcome it. I’ve grown, and sometimes in ways I did not expect, and wasn’t looking for (and did not know I would be a better version of myself thereby).

Lawn ornaments.

…Weird way to take note of growth and change…

…You know, I very nearly don’t have a container garden now, too… Had I mentioned that? Yeah… the deck is lovely as it is, without the clutter of a lot of pots, and the spiders and dirt and work that go with them… I had to get super real with myself; I’m only up for a certain amount of work, generally, and I have often fallen way behind on caring for my container garden. With the move I had some decisions to make. I do love that forest view. …And… I’ve also got a nice bit of front yard that is pleading with me to put in the effort there, creating a lovely cottage garden suited to my taste. I probably don’t have the sustained strength and purposefulness to garden both in the front and on the deck. I decided to leave the lovely view of the forest beyond the deck uninterrupted by potted roses… the roses, at long last, can put down roots, too. That gives me so much joy… and a reason to think about lawn ornaments with the future in mind.

…I still don’t know where the roses will each go… it needs more thought.

I finish off my water, and the sun sinks a bit lower. It’s time to begin again.

Tags be here now, be love, be present, be the change, change is, do you know where you're going to?, Giftmas, lawn ornaments, listening deeply, MBSR, meditation, mindfulness matters, perspective, planting roses, point of view, ptsd, stay on the path, taking care of me, TBI, Vote!

Categories Allegories, autumn, Brain Injury, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Roses, The Art of Being

An Entirely Different Point of View

July 23, 2020 //

I’m sipping my coffee, and considering words and pictures. I gave up on reading the news. I woke to the alarm, regrettable but necessary. My Traveling Partner was up shortly after I was (very early for him). I made him coffee, and returned to mine. Quiet morning. I don’t feel quite awake, yet.

Life in the time of pandemic continues to be strange. My hair is returning to it’s natural color as it grows out. Going to a salon to have it cut and colored doesn’t seem like a good idea. It hangs in my face, annoying me. I push it back, it flops back into my eyes, obscuring my glasses. This is definitely one way of altering my perspective (or point of view). It doesn’t get me anywhere I need to go, but it’s definitely a change. lol

Living in a new place has a lot of opportunities for new perspective, or a change in my point of view. Small stuff, mostly. Light switches in “strange” locations will soon become familiar, but for now, they are jarring reminders of change. Differences in light and shadows at various times of day are another shift in perspective. New, different rooms, and making use of space quite differently due to having a bit more of it, all shift my perspective a small amount. The overall effect can be unsettling at times. I’m letting the days go by as gently as I can while I get used to things.

There’s a new view, from a new deck, and new trees to gaze into, across a new distance…

Summer is lush and green.

I’ve begun snapping pictures of a particular perspective, from a particular point of view, often…

…As I once did from a particular point of view along my walking commute in Portland…

…This new view is lush, green, and yes, framed by trees. It’s actually mostly trees. And sky. Trees and sky. It’s a nice point of view to have, I think…

Trees and sky on a recent summer day.

It’s not the sort of fancy view that a shining golden city at sunrise might seem to be…on the other hand, it has a simplicity and easygoing beauty to it that feels relaxed, natural, and perhaps just a bit less likely to be hiding an assortment of unpleasant surprises in its distant beauty. 🙂

It’s a view with some moods and variety, even in summer.

A new point of view, in a very practical and literal way – my new point of view – a place to stand, gaze outward while I reflect inward. A new source of inspiration. “Is the sky still blue?”, a friend once asked me in a moment of heartache and other shades of blue. It was, then, and it is now. Lovely shades of blue on quiet summer days. It’s still a lot of change, and there’s so much to get used to… but I already love this view, so very much. 🙂 It’s enough.

I’m smiling as my Traveling Partner walks away. Love is a nice thing to have and enjoy – and work for. More than “enough”. I sip my coffee and yield to this moment of love and gratitude. My eye wanders to the time. As much as I’d rather just sit with this one lovely moment awhile longer, it’s apparently time to begin again. 🙂

Tags a change in perspective, a change in point of view, be love, be the change, be the change you wish to see, begin again, emotional self sufficiency, experience, MBSR, meditation, p.s. I love you, perspective, point of view, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, sufficiency, TBI, The Art of Being, the map is not the world, the stillness of trees, there are verbs involved, trees and sky, walking my own path, we become what we practice, what matters most?

Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being

Coffee at 2:00 am

July 26, 2019 //

It’s hard to call it “waking up early”, when on a different day of week, under other circumstances, I’d just be… still awake. lol I woke around 1:30 am. I’m not sure what woke me, and initially I had every intention of simply going back to sleep. That just didn’t work out. I’m awake. Wholly and completely awake, and quite alert, and ready to begin the day… only… it’s not time for that.

I finally gave up on trying to sleep; it’s not an endeavor that lends itself well to vigorous attempts, and it had become clear that I wasn’t going to be sleeping again any time soon. I’m too familiar with the enduring grogginess that comes of finally falling back to sleep, less than an hour from the alarm going off, and then having to more or less drag myself through my day. Wasted effort. Never able to fully wake and enjoy my day with any sense of purpose. Trapped in a dream-like state. I just have too many other things to do with my time, heading into the weekend, and getting things ready for my Traveling Partner to return home. So – awake it is. I showered, meditated, did some yoga, and made coffee.

…So far it is a lovely morning. 😀

There is some sort of cosmic, comic, betrayal in my experience of sipping on this excellent cup of coffee; I am immediately sleepier than I’ve been since I woke up! I laugh it off; the clock keeps ticking, and I’ve committed myself, at this point, to starting the day a bit ahead of schedule.

As if mocking me, this also ends up being a morning on which I have little to say, as I sit here. I’m sort of just… here. That’s okay, too. There’s no requirement (or real potential) that every moment of living life be somehow spectacular and richly fulfilling. Some moments are just moments – quite enough as they are, and nothing noteworthy or fancy. It’s that sort of morning, only with extra minutes. 😀

I put on my headphones, and hit play on my favorite playlist. It’s tempting to read the news…but… I don’t need to fill my head with outrage machinery and Other People’s Drama, certainly not this early on a quiet morning. Music seems a better fit to this moment. 🙂 I smile into the day ahead, and let the moments tick by, contentedly. This morning, it’s very much enough. 🙂

Perspective is sometimes about the view from a singular moment. If I stand somewhere else, doesn’t my perspective change? 🙂

It took time, and still requires regular practice, and I can’t stress enough how valuable it has been to learn to shift my perspective. Getting hung up on one element of one moment of one experience can really wreck a day (or days, or weeks, or a lifetime…), and there is so much more to consider, to appreciate, and to incorporate into totality of this human life. I’m definitely a fan of a change in perspective in stressful times. Sounds easy – isn’t always. It’s easier with practice, though; we become what we practice. 😀

How though? I mean, in practical terms, how do I “change my perspective” on some hard moment, or other? Well… sometimes I play “The Multi-Verse Game”. 🙂

Every window potentially a different human life in progress, a different point of view…

To play The Multi-Verse Game, I consider my challenge from the basic assumption that there is variety in human experience. Given a large number of human beings, each potentially sharing some slightly different version of a similar, potentially very common, experience, how could the subtle variations play out? What different results would play out, based on differing choices, and subtle differences in experience? I imagine many different sorts of human beings, having this experience that is challenging me so very much, and I allow the scenes to play out, one by one. This person, that choice, these details – how does the story end? That person, other choices, different details – and now how does it go? I extend this into various versions of my own experience; if some one choice or detail were different, in my own life, how would my experience change, then? If nothing else, it becomes entertaining narrative craft, a little internal theater – and often, it allows me to more easily let go of bullshit assumptions I’ve made, and failed to notice are needlessly driving my stress. Sometimes the game serves to alert me of alternatives, and choices, that could work out well for me, that I had not previously understood with clarity, but are revealed in the story-telling.

Another great practice in dark times is making a point to test my assumptions; so much of my anxiety turns out to be caused by my assumptions, rather than by any solid truths or realities of my circumstances. 🙂

…I think of a friend. One of those old friends that is somehow “always there”, even if we’re out of touch for years. Still… sort of a dick move to not make at least some effort; people matter more than that. I pause to send him an email. Just a greeting, really, and a reminder that we exist on a shared journey, separated only by distance. 🙂 Dropping off of the social media landscape has been a little odd in this regard; I’d grown very dependent on it to maintain friendships and associations across vast chasms of geographical distance, and even across time. Now? I’ve got to actually work at those – and occasionally find myself “trapped in the now”, far away, and less than inclined to do so in any practical way. I contemplate my great-grandmother’s letter writing, which I can recall from the edge of adolescence. She was still living, and it was the focal point of her life. She wrote letters to friends. They wrote letters to her. It’s a habit worth cultivating. The world changes – will social media (and the internet, or even electricity) always be available? I sometimes wonder…

The music plays on.

Yeah… that’s the stuff I listen to “in real life”. lol What about you? Aren’t there details about who you are, the you that you, yourself, know so well, that all those “non you” people seem regularly surprised by? 😉 I grin to myself, content to be who I am, in the wee hours, half-aware of the time as it passes, song by song, minute by minute. I notice that my coffee, cold now, is almost gone. It’s well past 3:00 am, already. Feels like a new day, and not the “middle of the night”, now. I guess it’s time to begin again… 😀

Tags be the change, begin again, being and becoming, check your assumptions, cosmic betrayal, e-dubble, emotional self sufficiency, good self-care, how to change perspective, I am my own cartographer, keep trying, live your life, mindful living, mindfulness for beginners, perspective, point of view, ptsd, relationships, repetition is learning, sufficiency, TBI, The Art of Being, the map is not the world, The Multi-Verse Game, there are verbs involved, waking up early, walking my own path, we become what we practice

Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Art of Being

Some Fall, Some Are Cut Down

January 20, 2019 //

I was sipping my coffee between moments in the studio when I really noticed; there’s a tree missing from the view beyond my deck.

What I expected to see…

It’s not a great picture, and I warn you now, it isn’t from an identical perspective – and perhaps that’s why it nagged at me so much. Something is different, I spotted that right away, but figured, in the gloom of twilight, last night, that perhaps it was just more winter, fewer leaves, more lights in the distance… something.

…what I see today.

There’s a missing tangle of mostly-dead tree. Obvious as anything could be, once I allowed myself to really see it, absent my expectations. There’s something to be learned from that.

The healthy heart-wood of the stump left-behind, quite evenly cut, about 18 inches from the ground, tells me it was not lost to misadventure or high winds. Willful. Probably well-intended. I feel sad about it anyway, thinking about the owl that had been making her home there. The squirrels using it as a freeway ramp to the tree nearer the deck. The loss of privacy from neighbors beyond. Just… the loss of a tree. It’s painful. Oh, I’m sure a dead tree just hanging out there on the steep edge of the yard, where it suddenly drops off just past the fence, was a hazard of some sort, to something, but… fucking hell. I’m getting a little sick of people just taking my fucking trees away every-fucking-where that I move. Irksome.

There’s much to learn from contemplating this change. Trees fall. Trees are cut. Impermanence is. Non-attachment helps with the pain of circumstantial misfortunes. We have choices. Trees can be planted. Trees sprout. Trees grow.

I sip a delicious afternoon coffee – a perk of having a 3-day weekend, afternoon coffee always feels like luxury to me. 🙂 I contemplate impermanence, and change – and choices. I think about seeing. I mean, really seeing – eyes and mind both open to what may be new and changed. I contemplate acceptance; change can be hard. Recognizing what has changed is not without it’s own challenges. I breathe. Relax, and consider what I am practicing, and what I want to achieve. I think over conversations with my Traveling Partner; this last visit was rich with thought-provoking, inspiring, observations, and discussion. Connected. Insightful. Loving.

We become what we practice. (Remember, “trees take a long time” 😉 )

Tags anxiety, be here now, be the change, begin again, being and becoming, breathe, choose wisely, connections, emotional self sufficiency, experience, good self-care, I am my own cartographer, intimacy, listening deeply, love and lovers, man down, MBSR, meditation, mindful living, more trees please!, one tree, perspective, point of view, practicing the practices, ptsd, relationships, seeing with new eyes, sharing the journey, some are cut, Some fall, TBI, the forest and the trees, the map is not the world, there are verbs involved, trees, walking my own path, we become what we practice, what are you practicing?, what matters most?

Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Despair, forgiveness, Free Will, Frustration, gardening, grief, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter