perspective shifting
I've been clearing out my office files at a transition point in a long career. Some of the intractable issues we were so incredibly frothed up about ten years ago have become ...well, non-issues. I mourn again when I read my notes about catastrophes in the lives of the occasional student, but exult to know that most of them transcended the challenges they once faced. I chuckle with pride when I read the scrawled notes that led to incipient programs that now are full-fledged centers and institutes and networks.
Our perspective can change in iterations over years or it can change in a flash.
We've all had that experience of walking out the door in the morning and getting news during the day that changed us so completely that walking back in the door that night felt surreal. Hearing about the loss of a loved one while we were at work? Everything re-orients suddenly into junk mail. Or the doctor tosses a diagnosis into the conversation that changes all future prospects. A taxi careens through a crosswalk and narrowly misses us and we lean, heart pounding, against the newspaper box.
It certainly doesn't have to be a disaster (or a near-disaster) to bring about a view-point shift. A brand-new alumna told me when she found out she was at the top of her graduating class, it instantly re-framed her perspective of her education, in retrospect, to something radically powerful: she saw her degree as a door-opener that she never anticipated while she was slogging through her studies. The wake-up moment can be as simple as a random slice of sunlight slashing through the clouds in just the right way, illuminating a doorway or it can be a comment overheard from a passing stranger.
In my file-weeding, I found a note from a long-dead friend telling me how much I was loved and I sat, blurry-eyed, lost in nostalgia. I also found many hilariously out-of-date to-do lists. You know damn well that I'll forget this experience in a week or a month or whenever (because that's what we do) and I'll go back to making my lists and fretting about whatever I fret about, but in the meantime, the prod is a good one. We can check our list of worries and ask the age-old question: will it matter in a year? in two? in ten? at the end of our lives?
There doesn't have to be a lesson in every little thing, but it doesn't hurt Today's Jeannie to be reminded that Yesterday's Jeannie was worried about things that she doesn't much care about right now. That means Tomorrow's Jeannie will likely look back on the list of Today's Jeannie's anxieties and have a little laugh.*
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*By the way, the act of referring to oneself in the third person is one of my pet peeves--there's actually a word for it, illeism, beside the rude one that tempts me--so please forgive me and rest assured that I am only doing this to make a point.
