Originally posted on Facebook HERE
Today’s “Looking Out My Back Window” post features a different back window. We have several of them. This is getting close to the end of my third year of blog posts, and other than the times we weren’t at home, I think maybe one other time I took a photo from a window that wasn’t the living room. This is the view from our garage access door. It’s vertical instead of horizontal, so when I was considering using it today I had all kinds of internal conflict about it – “well, that vertical photo won’t translate well when in book form”, etc… took a few tries to get a photo I was happy with… but even though the back yard is always the same, there’s at least ten windows I could use to look at it, and they’ll all have a slightly different view of the exact same object. And so it is with people. Things happen in the world, and no two people will ever have the same experience or view of anything, much less everything. So why do we spend so much time and effort trying to get people to see things our way? It will never happen. It can’t ever happen – two separate people are two separate windows that can never look upon the world at exactly the same angle. So, when I went to get the paper today and saw this view I thought, “wow, the back yard looks so cool through this door today. I should use that for the writing.” If we could only try looking at each other’s viewpoint with that attitude, maybe we’d have less anger and hatred over things that will never happen – like having anyone else see things our way. It’s physically impossible. We can, however, give people an idea of what our view looks like – and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have to turn hostile. But the nature of things is such that viewpoints will clash, people will disagree, and there will be misunderstandings. We tend to hang with the people who have similar viewpoints as we do. Makes for a calmer, happier existence. Some people seem to thrive on the conflict, though. Purposely look to argue with others who see things differently. Politics and religion are two areas that come to mind there. One world, many windows. Our time here is limited. Why spend it arguing? Find your own peace. Maybe look at things from another angle every now and then. There is no one “right” way to look at anything. There are many ways to look at everything. Walk away from the people and places that create anxiety, anger and upset in your life. There’s not enough time for that.
