We were looking at some old vacation photos of a favorite beach where a spectral forest of driftwood, bathed in morning mist, embellished by long shadows cast by the sun slowly rising out of the ocean, invited young and old to explore its mysteries. Every tide offered new discoveries, and every hour of the day created something unique and ephemeral. We spent many hours wandering that beach, and the old pictures carried an echo of those cherished times.
More recent photos of the beach are not so pleasing to us. Time has taken its toll on the shoreline. The forest of driftwood has mostly disappeared, washed away by higher tides and hurricanes traveling over rising sea levels. The protective dunes have eroded, and high tide now breaches the adjacent marsh. When we first saw the beach in its current state, we were shocked and saddened.
Not long after revisiting memories of the beach we now perceived as dismal, I happened upon a social media post by someone who had just seen it for the first time. To them, it was the most enchanting place on earth. If I didn’t know the beach to which they referred, their glowing description would entice me to visit, and their photos revealed a very different place from the one we saw in our own collection.
The lesson landed very close to the mark. Like many native-born and longtime residents in these enchanted hills, I’ve been here long enough to see many changes: Ridgelines scraped, farms converted to ticky-tacky, silt running in streams, and the lake surrounded by a bathtub ring of docks. Few alive remember the farmland that the lake now covers.
But ask someone new to the area how they perceive the same hills that we see filtered by the lens of our memories. It’s still the most beautiful place on earth.
The wisdom is ancient, if often lost between the ages. The Scriptures say, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” In the earthly realm, I think the ability to see all things as new, like a child, is the difference between happiness and misery.
The brain itself, that differencing engine constantly laboring for our survival, can begin to damage our peace of mind as we get older. Memory, crystallized, idealized, can exert a stronger influence than what is right in front of us. It’s not like it was when I was young. Things will never be the same. Nothing is as good as it used to be.
As our good friend, Leann says, depression is living in the past; anxiety is living in the future. Some of us are able to overcome that perception deception and retain a certain childlike innocence which allows our perspective to refresh and renew. That, I believe, is the difference between the delightful older gentleman with the twinkle in his eye and the codger.
I’m not advocating the abandonment of a sincere desire to protect what is natural, beautiful, and peaceful about our area, and ironically, it is often the newcomer who is more protective of these things than the longtime resident who has lost perspective or any resident, new or old, whose highest level of perception is not beauty itself but the potential of that beauty for monetization.
We should always strive to see things as they truly are. Some truths are immutable. Numbers that are factual cannot be wished away by a Pollyanna perspective. But when it comes to happiness and peace of mind, these, my friends, are overwhelmingly matters of perspective. Perspective is determined by our choices, and choice, in a beautiful symmetry, is determined by perspective.
Outside The Box 