Change your lens

When I was younger I used to love taking photo’s of people of nature of animals and of anything else that tickled my fancy. Sadly I do not focus on this hobby as often as I used to because of all kinds of excuses. However, my experience as a photographer did teach me something I recently remembered.

As human beings we should be able to develop our abilities to change our lenses in order to view life from different perspectives. Having a fixed lense or mindset is never a good thing.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have once again seen the dangers of only seeing the ear and missing the elephant. We so often choose to focus on what we want to see about another person, because it suits our narrative. We focus so much on their mistakes, weaknesses and defects that we lose sight of their beauty, uniqueness and intricacies.

We all have a responsibility to view life, people, events through a zoom as well as a wide angle lens.
If we zoom into a topic we see the detail, the messy parts and all the wrong choices. We criticize and judge and easily feel superior. We see the splinter in our neighbor’s eye but unfortunately miss the log in our own.

If we use our wide angle lens, we see the whole elephant, the big picture, the true narrative about the person that has wronged us or the traumatic event that disturbed our peace and joy. When we are able to take a step back, change our lens, we become aware of the story behind the story. We are able to see clearer how all the puzzle pieces fit.

It is when we are able to use both lenses, our zoom and our wide angle mindset that we can truly view the elephant from all angles and learn the lesson we need to learn.

If we are not able to learn what we need to learn the lesson will repeat itself again and again in our lives.
If only we took the time to change our lens and to walk around our “challenge” and to view it from top to bottom and look for those little gems hidden away that have the potential to help us grow and develop into the people we were meant to be.