What's Your Perspective?

     On a couple occasions this winter, John and I have taken visiting friends to a national monument called Tuzigoot, not far from here.   It is an ancient pueblo ruin set high up on a hill, with sweeping views on all sides.    As we strolled through the ruins, I was struck by the contrast between the view from inside one of the rooms of the pueblo,  and the view from almost anywhere outside the rooms on the surrounding walkway.

      One of the pictures shown here is from inside a room, looking through an archway at the landscape.   Charming though the arch is,  the view through it reveals only a little of what is out there.  I am struck with what a good image this is of how most of us view the world most of the time--from the confines of the "room" in which we live:   our memories, our beliefs, our opinions, our emotions---all the socially conditioned responses we call our perspective.  And depending on which room we are in,  we can be looking out at the very same landscape and see quite different things.  

      On the other hand, if we can get out of the confines of our particular view-point by realizing that there is a lot more to be seen if we just quit identifying with our particular opinions and experience as if they were "The Truth,"  what a marvelous view opens before us!   Walking around looking at things from many different viewpoints, and getting the Big Picture, is a freeing and exhilarating experience.   I recommend it!  It is humbling too, to realize the huge variety of human perspectives and experience over centuries and in a multitude of cultures.

Surely it is foolish for any of us to think that our generation, or our culture, or our own viewpoint is "the way it is."   Reality is so much greater than our every-day ordinary way of looking at things lets us see.  

     So---lets get out of that culturally conditioned, personally limited dark little room that shuts out so much we need to see, and see things from the hilltop of the grand sweep of human experience through time and all over the world.   And while we are at it,  lets not zero in on what the history books tell us of cruelty, bloodshed, and other human depravity.  Rather, let us look out over the beautiful earth that somehow withstands and endures, and gladdens our heart with its beauty and peace, come what may.