The Power of Perspective
About a week before I took my daughter to the ER with what turned out to be a life-threatening condition resulting in an extended stay, a group of my sixth graders and I had been reading The Diary of Anne Frank. We had discussed Anne’s perspective on the beauty and misery of life in comparison to her mother’s. Anne wrote that “Her (Anne’s mother’s) counsel when one feels melancholy is: ‘Think of all the misery in the world and be thankful that you are not sharing in it!’ My advice is: ‘Go outside, to the fields, enjoy nature and the sunshine, go out and try to recapture happiness in yourself and in God. Think of all the beauty that’s still left in and around you and be happy!’”
In signature maturity and reflection, this group of amazing students noted that it’s often easier to take Anne’s mother’s approach but maybe the way to real happiness is more in line with Anne’s theory. Of course, they were right. But despite years of practice, I often still fall back to an idea of perspective founded more on comparison than shifting viewpoint.
Like many people, I was raised to be thankful and clear my plate because someone, somewhere was hungry. And I did, but it didn’t always make me feel good. In fact, often it made me feel terrible. I would look around me and realize how good I had it, and either feel terribly guilty for being sad or incensed at the injustice in the world.
These past few weeks as I’ve roamed the halls of hospital wings filled with children, many with profoundly disabling conditions, and watched my daughter work through tasks that may never be possible for other children, again, I got that feeling. But now I have a better understanding of how to process it.
Although I’ve known for some time that eating all my dinner wouldn’t help anyone else, it was a slow revelation to see that there is a difference between having the perspective to recognize my privilege, and comparing my situation to others in order to make myself feel better. At once complete opposites and close cousins, the former can be a tool for inspiring social justice and change, the latter can further divide people and create social castes. Of course, they can also be used together to both propel us to action and allow us to see our shared humanity.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve used comparison perspective in response to heartbreak. Thinking something like, “Well, at least I’m not….” fill in the blank: a refugee, a homeless person, an abused spouse, etc. And for a moment, I felt relieved. But that relief quickly subsided and my heartbreak was compounded by the fact that the world had all these injustices to solve. This approach also falsely elevates my being above others. And that’s not right. You can translate “Well, at least I’m not homeless” to “I wouldn’t want to be them” pretty quickly and that doesn’t help bring us together as humans, it just serves to further separate us and enable those of us with privilege to avoid asking “why aren’t I …” fill in the blank.
The other danger of comparison perspective is that it is often used as a cheap substitute for the type of perspective that allows you to consciously shift your viewpoint of a situation — a powerful tool that lets you see opportunities for growth and learning in challenge and even experience gratitude for the hard stuff.
So as I walk the halls of the hospital, I am changing the way I see things and allowing myself to have multiple experiences simultaneously. Now as I see the 18-month old child hanging out at the nurses’ station, presumably because a parent can’t take time off of work to be with her all the time, I’m not thinking, “At least we aren’t in that situation.” I’m thinking, “This is why we need stronger safety nets in this country, family leave that insures pay and other legislative measures — because it affects people’s lives when they need it most: take note, remember, make a call, vote.” I’m looking and seeing the kids and adults working through challenging disabilities and rather than placing my daughter on a ranking sheet with them, I’m thinking about how we can create a world designed to be more inclusive for all.
Likewise, I’m allowing myself to feel the pain of watching my daughter struggle to do something that was so easy for her days ago; to miss the comfort of my bed, the routine of walking my kids to school and struggling to get them to bed, the joy of working with my students. While at once reveling in the gift of time spent with my daughter, the opportunity to guiltlessly appreciate the outpouring of love from our community, and beginning to see the vast learning opportunities hidden in the moment.
I realize for many these are the lessons learned from a year of Covid. I guess I’m a slow study because I will admit that last year, even as I consciously appreciated the time and space to grow a garden and make bread, I was also comparing my Covid-related damages to those around me and feeling pretty guilty. Ultimately, the current of the world allowed me to channel some of that guilt into positive action but it didn’t give me the language to recognize and identify that while it is important to “think of all the misery in the world…”, being thankful to not be sharing in it is not enough and at the same time, find all the moments to “recapture happiness” and “Think of all the beauty that’s still left in and around you and be happy!’”
