A Change in Perspective
I am a creature of habit. I prefer to go about my routine and when I don’t follow the routine I am out-of-sorts all day – whether it was because I hit the snooze button or because the cats decided to proudly show me how sharp and shiny they managed to make their claws overnight.
There are many benefits to being this way. For one, I always make the coffee the same way – never too weak, never too strong. For another, I’m always able to get up on time after a late night REO Speedwagon concert or Firefly marathon—because my body is trained to just get up. And I always remember to feed the cats… though I suppose that could be more about the cats than it is about me.
While there is certainly something to be said for consistency, being a creature of habit has its downsides too. Sometimes I have a hard time dealing with change because, simply, it challenges the routine. I have trouble relaxing when I go on vacation because the bed is different, the water is different (which makes the coffee different) and for some inexplicable reason, I actually miss cleaning up after the cats.
But the biggest downside of being a creature of habit may very well be the fact that it makes it easy for me to miss sources of inspiration around me every day. I think this is likely an issue to one degree or another for everybody. You go about your day, drive to and from work, walk back and forth to the coffee pot, wander outside to do yard work—all the while not really seeing where you are. Even though our specific activities might change, we get into a routine and our perspective doesn’t change.
What brought this idea to light for me was probably something you wouldn’t expect: it was a picture of the underside of the hot water heater in my basement. I don’t have that picture available to me to share, but it certainly gave me a view of things I would not normally see. The colors and patterns of the rust, the appearance of three-dimensional “halos” and structure on it – it all looked like a strangely alien landscape with amazing architecture and a history of its own. Yes, in reality it was just a rusty metal barrel which needed to be replaced, but looking at it in a way I hadn’t looked at it in 17 years of walking past it every day provided me with inspiration and a different perspective.
I’ve been trying to look at things differently now at other times of my generally-scripted day. I walk the dog like I do every day, but now I look up at the sky.
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Swirling clouds? Sure. A couple of birds on the wind? Sure. But maybe they’re not birds. Maybe they’re alien scout ships and the bright clouds behind them (to the left) are from the massive heat of their entry into the atmosphere. What if we think of this not as the sky but as a look out onto the horizon. A change in perspective makes this not an alien invasion but a massive plume of smoke from a fire at the chemical factory across town (or maybe the neighbor’s grill). Or imagine that you are looking down on this scene. Perhaps it is the swirling sea and a couple of boats wearily riding the storm out. |
| Or take a closer look at the tree you walk past every day. From my perspective, being taller than them, they’re just bumps and lumps. And sure, they probably are just a knot or an old injury… but look at them from a slightly different angle, perhaps as a shorter child might look at them from slightly below. Maybe this is the face of an ancient tree spirit, keeping watch over the land it has been sworn to protect. If this tree could talk, what stories would it tell? |  |
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Is this a retaining wall? Or is it the ruins of a once great and noble city – the last remnants of an ancient civilization? Maybe it’s part of a cemetery or a portal to another dimension! |
| But what if we do a little technological magic to it? Flipping it over and inverting the colors, it becomes a flowing field of crystals, or perhaps a giant glacier: |  |
| We’re always told to take time to stop and smell the roses – but perhaps what we need as writers is to take time to stop and look at things we take for granted. Look closely at the intricate patterns of the white tufts of a mature dandelion flower; lay down under a tree and look up at it instead of looking at it as you normally would. | |
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Inspiration for stories and poems is all around us and, I’m finding, especially in the things we routinely ignore. How different do things seem if we take time to look at them the way someone else might look at them? How different would the world be if we could all take a few minutes each day to really see what is surrounding us on the periphery of our conciousness? What new stories might this new perspective bring to the world?
How very true. I’m always reminded of how rote life can be, especially when you work from home and are self-employed )as I know you are) when I do something out of the ordinary version of life. I take a bus into the city to go to a book launch, or we take a weekend trip away. The world because a vast oyster of shiny new things.
This is why I LOVE your prompt to change my perspective. From here on in, I pledge to look at my world differently. It is libel to freak me out if I start imagine alien invasion via my garbage bin, or a flotilla among the random papers accumulated at the edge of the kitchen table, but this is the year of writing dangerously. Could also be the year of living dangerously.
I’m glad you found this inspiring, Jodi! I, too, am trying to take this as a challenge to myself to find the inspiration in the mundane normalcy of life. However, I really WANT to find the alien invasion in the garbage bin… because that’s what I enjoy writing. Good luck!
You have very interesting perspectives on things, thanks for getting my imagination sparked.
I’m a “nature child” so pretty much always take time to notice trees and plants and animals. What you wrote is pretty much how I live day to day — really appreciating nature and my surroundings. On the other hand, I don’t normally take time to look at things that are not “natural”, like the underside of a hot water heater, or the rust, dings and nicks on a garden shovel, so perhaps I’ll open my eyes a little wider.
Robbie, I have spent so much time thinking about how anything “man-made” is just plain ugly and frail compared to that which nature provides, that sometimes I forget that it is just a matter of how you look at it. Sure, the ugly dings on a shovel or rust on the underside of a bridge or cracked cement walls are just unnatural… but if you look at them, you find that nature is simply taking it back. Seeing a little plant growing from the smallest crack in the pavement is amazing. Even in the most unnatural of environments, nature just keeps trying. Like we all should do.
Indeed! When I find myself surrounded by too much man-made and not enough nature, I’ll be looking hard to find nature making her presence.
What a brilliant reminder to keep our eyes open! I think I’ll take your advice today on my walk home. Thanks, Rob.
I hope the walk home was (or will be) enlightening and inspirational, Jen. I know it’s been rewarding for me as I’ve reminded myself to find the uniqueness among the normalcy.