It occurred to me today that perspective is a conscious decision to stay accurate in your interpretation of your circumstances.
I think it’s safe to say that I have been depressed before; I know myself well enough to understand how I’m feeling, and I know that there have been times when my level of sadness has been deep enough and prolonged enough to fit the definition of depression. During these times, I’ve reached out, to seek assistance from the people that are closest to me, who can help to keep me from falling all of the way into that darkness, when it comes. I’ve talked to my physician, and he and I have discussed the triggers that exist for me, in my life, that tend to spill me into the darkness, when I’m not being careful. We’ve talked about medication, and other treatments that might be available, if I ever felt like I needed such things.
All told, I think it’s probably happened three or four times, if I’m only counting the times when it has been serious enough for me to be a little worried about the symptoms.
After the most serious bout of depression I think I’ve ever had, my wife bought me a ring that was etched with a single word on the band of the ring; the word was ‘perspective’. The inside of the band of the ring was also etched, with words of love and affection from my family. I’ve been wearing the ring for years now, and the etching on the outside is gone, has been worn off by the passage of time, by countless small scratches that have eroded the surface of the ring.
Nevertheless, I still always see the word ‘perspective’ on the ring when I look at it; I suspect I always will.
And, of course, the inner etching has been resting against my skin, all of these years. Those words are still clearly visible on the ring. My family loves me and I love them.
It’s funny how life just wears away at us. Like so many tiny scratches and little dings and dents, until we are only a weathered version of our previous selves, just like the surface of the ring I wear. We know what used to be, before the erosion of life happened, even though it might not be apparent to anyone else who would happen to look and see.
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My wife had the word ‘perspective’ etched on the ring that I wear because, as we’ve discussed on multiple occasions –she and I– the hardest thing for me to keep in mind, when the darkness comes, is that keeping things in perspective helps me to understand that some things are more important than others, and that some things really aren’t that important at all, despite the tendency that I have to get confused about my priorities.
And that’s the thing, isn’t it?
We don’t always do a great job of thinking about what’s going on in our lives and interpreting the degree to which we should be giving a significant amount of emotional weight to things that aren’t really significant. That’s how we lose perspective; we forget that the small things are just small things, or we mistake the small things for being larger than they are, and then we make mountains out of molehills.
And, this can go both ways, as well. We might naturally assume that a loss of perspective would lead a person to think of some small negative things as being huge negative things, but it’s also the case that a loss of perspective can lead people to think that small positive things are huge positive things.
Take, for example, this blog. For 150 posts, I have been excited to be growing into becoming the writer that I’ve always wanted to be. For the last fifty of those posts, I have been sharing my writing with a wider audience and it’s been great having people reading my writing and letting me know that it’s making a difference in their lives, and I’m really excited about that.
But, keeping it all in perspective, it’s really not that big a deal, especially when compared to what it is that I want to accomplish.
If making a mountain out of a molehill is a bad thing, then I would think that’s got to go both ways. If a big change in elevation is to be avoided, then a molehill isn’t a mountain, so we ought not get upset about something that isn’t as bad as we would make it out to be in our minds. Along the same lines, if I am wanting a huge change in elevation, a molehill is not a mountain and I ought not get excited about something that is less than the goal that I have for myself.
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If I am wanting to become a published author, having a blog that people are reading, while somewhat fun and exciting, isn’t the mountain that I’m wanting it to be.
This post is Post #150, as nearly as I can tell by counting. It will also be my last consecutive daily post.
I was having a conversation last night with a couple of friends of mine, about my writing –on this post and the novel writing that I am ‘working on’– and about whether or not I can get to where I want to be from where I am now. The two of these friends suggested that I wouldn’t have to abandon all of the work that I’ve done in establishing this blog for the people who read it diligently. Rather, for me to be able to get the time that I need to move my novels closer to their finished states, I should just scale back my output on this blog.
So, as you are most likely reading this blog on the Monday that it goes live (if you’ve been keeping up with me), I will let you know that I am reevaluating the emotional weight that I’ve been assigning to this blog, in the hopes that I will be able to spend more time finishing the novels that I am working on. My intent is to move forward with this blog on a publishing schedule of Mondays-Wednesdays-Fridays, leaving me four days a week to work on my novel writing.
Thanks for being on this ride with me, especially those of you who’ve been there all along the way. My next blog post on this blog will go live on Wednesday, and then again on Friday.
I want to close by saying that I feel like I am responsible to all of you that have been reading my writing, and I hope that I will have a novel for you to read in the near future.
In the words of the immortal Robert Frost, I have “miles to go before I sleep.”
It Occurred To Me Today 