Look at The Stars

My interpretation of a photo of the Tarantula Nebula taken by the James Webb telescope. The universe is huge. I am tiny.

“Look at the stars. They won’t fix the economy, they won’t stop wars, they won’t give you flat abs, or even help you figure out your relationship and what you want to do with your life. But they’re important. They remind you that you and your problems are both infinitesimally small, and, conversely, that you are a piece of an amazing and vast universe.” Author unknown

The idea of perspective has rented a room in my head for the last week or so. Of course this is not the first time perspective has wandered into my thoughts. This visit, however, is proving to be more powerful than I remember previous visits to be. I suppose that has to do with aging and knowing that I am more aware now than I was ten, twenty, certainly thirty or fifty years ago. I know more than I did then. Perhaps perspective is lingering because I understand her better now and our conversation affords more depth.

Here’s the deal. Perspective is one of those quiet forces that shapes everything without announcing itself. It’s really the frame through which we see our world. I think I used to see my place in the universe as much bigger than it really is. I don’t think that’s uncommon for younger people and maybe that is the view that is essential for people in the beginning or middle of life.

Perspective is the ability to step back from this immediate moment and hold an experience at a distance. It’s not detachment so much as viewing in context. You still hold the entire experience of that moment - the person you are, the people you are with, the physical/emotional/spiritual place in which you find yourself, the circumstances in which you find yourself - but you look at it across the space and time of that moment. It’s like viewing a piece of art. You can put your face right up close and be immersed in the brush strokes and the colors and that’s what you see. Or, you can step back ten feet and see the image created by the brush strokes and the colors. You choose the view you want.

In real life, perspective is finding yourself in a disconcerting moment and asking, “What else might be going on here?”. It’s recognizing that this horrible hour/day (or beautiful hour/day) is but a tiny sliver of a week and even tinier sliver of a year AND a microscopic sliver of a life time. Without perspective, the present moment expands to fill the entire horizon. A negative interaction becomes an adversary forever. An inconvenience becomes an obstacle. A hardship becomes your narrative. Life turns in a new way.

With perspective, events find their right place in the grand scheme of things.

Here’s something about perspective that I appreciate. Perspective makes love easier. When you remember that everyone you meet is carrying invisible histories, you soften. The cranky clerk may have just received bad news. The friend who didn’t show up for you may be sinking into their own despair. Even your younger self, whose choices now seem arrogant, ill-advised, or irresponsible, was operating with the tools available at the time. Keeping all that in the back of my mind when I interact with myself and with other people, allows me to be far more curious and far less judgmental.

Perspective is about remembering scale. The universe presents itself as a graduated system. Human beings are complex and nuanced. The real task is for us to hold life at the right scale - not magnified, not minimized. When we can hold onto the bigger picture in our lives, when we can stay grounded in what really matters to us, we give ourselves the tools to love. And isn’t love the whole point of our existence?