Your Perspective is Your Prerogative

I love asking myself absurd questions. Unanswerable ones. The questions that don't serve any purpose in answering. You know the ones like..

Who first drank cow's milk and did they milk the cow or drink it straight from the udder?

What difference does it make to answer the question? Seemingly none. Yet I ask myself a variety of crazy questions all the time, and I go down rabbit holes trying to find the answers that were lost with time.

Why do I like to ask myself such questions? Maybe I just like to think about these obscure moments in human history. Maybe I am bored. Maybe I am just crazy.

While these could each be true, I like to think that I am interested in these questions because sometimes they lead to deeper and more serious conversations with myself, much like this one did.

Who was the very first human to think about drawing a picture on a 2-dimensional surface and why did they do it?

There are many answers that come to mind. They wanted to remember a moment in time or share that moment in time with someone else. They wanted to tell a story that would last for years to come. There are historians who have been more thorough than me in trying to understand what went through the minds early artists, but without being able to ask them, the true motives of these artists have been lost with time.

I then thought about the fact that early humans had to know that the 2-dimensional drawings that they used to represent 3-dimensional objects were not fully accurate. No one, not even our earliest human ancestors, could look at a 2-dimensional representation and think "Wow, this looks exactly like the real thing."

Let's be honest, we get the idea from the first picture, but it definitely doesn't look like the real thing.

The first artists could have drawn their 2-dimensional art, realized that it didn't look like the real thing, and given up. What kind of artless world would we live in if every time someone had drawn a 2-dimensional representation, they had taken up the opinion that it simply wouldn't work and gave up?

Quite the opposite seemed to happen. Instead of giving up, the human race took it upon themselves to see what they could do with a 2-dimensional surface, and a beautiful evolution stemmed from these first drawings.

We changed the perspective.

Over time, we added colors and shadows. We even created a technique called perspective that uses converging lines and vanishing points to create depth.

Humans took a less than ideal surface for representing 3-dimensional figures and made the best out of it that we could.

I encourage you to take a moment to look at the collection below and think about how impressive it is that humans found ways to beautifully represent our world on flat surfaces.

Photorealism Paintings

https://www.plusonegallery.com/blog/122/

Artists have taken less than ideal materials for representing 3-dimensional objects and made the absolute best of it with awe-inspiring results.

Why don't we do this more with aspects of our individual lives?

As I am writing this, we are in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. I scroll through social media and read the news to see all of the difficult situations this has put us in.

Medical supply shortages

Fear of Hospitalization

Unemployment

Working From Home

Rescheduled Weddings

Cancelled Vacations

No Sports

Changes to Education

Worries About Safety

Inability to Visit Loved Ones

Toilet Paper Shortage

This is just the beginning to a long list of negative effects that the pandemic is having on our world. Stress and worry are widespread, and they are rising along with the number of confirmed cases.

Yet I see people rising to make the best of the situation.

Family members have visited loved ones in nursing homes through the safety of windows. Parents and guardians are enjoying extra time with children. Educators are helping students continue to learn. School districts are finding ways to feed children. There are family game nights. Gyms are providing online workouts. People are enjoying peaceful walks outside.

I see people making the best of the situation in a time where stress and worry are high. How is this possible?

Positive thinking.

I will be the first to admit that this has always been hard for me. I have always struggled with anxiety. I catch myself seeing the worst in situations more frequently than I would like to admit, and I have definitely thrown many pity parties for myself over the years.

My husband was the one to graciously pointed out that I just needed to be more positive. This sounded like a great idea with no feasible plan of action, but he gave me two very concrete rules to follow.

1. Write down 3 things that you are grateful for every day.

2. When you are having negative thoughts, intentionally think of at least one positive that will come from the situation you are having negative thoughts about

I am not perfect at implementing these two rules into my life, but I have noticed a significant difference since I have started to incorporate intentional positive thinking into my everyday life.

Come to find out, there is actual evidence that positive thinking can positively impact your health. According to Mayo Clinic, there are researchers exploring the effects of positive thinking such as a greater resistance to the common cold and improved heart health.

Thinking positively is easier to do when little inconveniences occur, but it becomes much more difficult when the situations grow into crisis or tragedy.

What do we do when situations seem to have no silver lining?

A man by the name of Victor Frankl would give you this advice.

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

The man must not have been through very much, right? Life can be really cruel and unfair, and Victor must have been too naive to realize that if he thinks we have a choice to control our attitude no matter how horrible the circumstances.

Actually, Victor Frankl went through something that very few people who are alive can even fathom. He survived the Holocaust, and that particular quote is from his 1946 book Man's Search for Meaning in which he discusses his time in Nazi concentration camps as well as his methods for staying positive.

His experiences are just one example of the fact that our attitudes are exclusively our own. The outside world does not have a right to your perspective.

Your perspective is your prerogative.

You have exclusive rights to your perspective on life, and that is something that your circumstances cannot take away from you.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/positive-thinking/art-20043950

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