Gaining perspective is an incredibly ruthless business. A simple test of perspective would be looking at the photo above…a wheelchair, a woman and a woman in a wheelchair. Does your point of view of the wheelchair change when you see the woman in it? Or do your ideas of the woman change when you see her in the wheelchair? Recently, in a conversation with a friend, I told her that my accident has given me a lot of perspective…on raising kids, marriage, the world and all types of relationships. Her response to that was to say that she had zero desire to go through what I went through in order get that perspective. (Yeah…me too!) The entire process of looking at our past with the knowledge of our present can be quite painful sometimes. It can feel like we were selfish, spoiled or completely stupid. But I’ve been thinking about how viewpoints can be changed and if there is any way to achieve it without going through something significant; something traumatic.
