Changing_Perspectives

Changing Perspectives - The Journey is the Destination

Chapter I - The Journey Begins (Copyright, 2002 Janice Harter)

In the beginning all was darkness, closeness, warmth and comfort caressing the body and soothing the soul. Gentle heart beats, muffled sounds becoming increasingly familiar. Simple existence, everything provided, and continually learning just to be. Then, one day unexpectedly, the comfort that we came to know as home propelled us involuntarily from our place of comfort, santuary and solace. We found ourselves among the world of bright lights, assaulting crisp and unadulterated sounds. We were picked up by unseen hands, poked, prodded, rubbed, bundled and overwhelmed by the pain, the sensations, the bewilderment. Once on the outside, we began to understand that the landscape that was once our only perspective had changed. Everything that we once knew and found comfort in suddenly and unexplainably changed for us. We had our first taste of a new horizon and all of the seeming torture, fear and disappointment that goes with it.

The torture began to come to a close after what felt like an eternity. We were swaddled tightly in warm clean blankets and gently placed in the loving arms of our mothers for the first time. Crying still as loud and as hard as we could for moments on end for the newness to stop it's assault on our consciousness, we suddenly found a new warthm and a seeming sense of comfort again as the familiar heart beat that had taken on a new perspective was heard and felt in the most wonderful of ways. We opened our eyes to gaze upon the face of the woman who gave us life or the woman who was to become our mother. We could barely make out the features but something in the voice directed so sweetly and gently at us began to sooth us at once and we slowly settled into this new comfort zone. At this moment in time, life in the broader sense began for us.

We all enter the world in a similar fashion and have similar experiences to a major degree. We, each of us, share this experience in the beginning. At the moment we entered the world, the lessons began, our emotions began to form and our senses came to life and deepened with each breath and each passing moment. While our genetics may have shaped our disposition in general, in the moments after birth our environment took over and we grew, we learned and begain to experience life in a brand new way. While each of our lives are very different from that moment forward, there are still basic similarities and the fact that we are all still related in one form or another to contend with. We are part of the human race. A race that is destined to eventually develop and find greatness in the bigger scheme of existence. But sometimes it seems that we've got a long way to go before we can get there.

The harshest reality of the world is that as much as we enjuoy the love we feel, we must also contend with pain. The world can be a beautiful and magical place but it too can be a world of nightmares and other indescribable terrors. The collective of situations we face from the moment we were born into the the present in which we exist creates in us so many different emotions, protections, defenses, fears, joys, loves and so very many more reactions. Some things make us smile and feel hopeful while other things can bring us to our knees in desperation. The basic things that still relate us one to another is our emotions. When our emotions are balanced, we enjoy life, can deal with pain and can come to know a measure of peace even amongst chaos. But when our emotions are out of balance we can tend to focus on the negativities of our environment or even the world at large and experience moments of overwhelming and at times an all consuming chaos of emotions.

With a little reflection and clarity, we might be able to see the world as a huge training ground. We learn pretty quickly deep down inside that we've got to take the good with the bad in order to grow. On the surface, however, is an entirely different matter. Sometimes we seek to wrap ourselves up in our own lives and the lives of those around us in an effort to escape the harsh realities of the world or even to find a way not to feel at all. But really, the state of the world we live in has much to do with how we, as the human race, exist inside of ourselves. We create the world in which we live. When we don't like what we see, we tend to recoil and escape or we lash out and destroy in anger and frustration. We learn to pretend that the horrors don't exist, all the while continuing to live in our own little worlds oblivious and at times, even in denial of our own hands creating the wake of destruction in the paths trailing behind us.

We cannot change our lives or the wrongs of the world overnight, but there are things infinitely empowering that we can do right now, each of us, in our own minds, in our own hearts, and in our own little corners of the world. We can change. We can heal. We can grow and we can impact and affect in a positive way, our lives and the lives of those all around us. We absolutely can heal ourselves, our environment and project a new conscious thought out onto the world which will help bring about some very necessary changes. It really takes but one small step to initiate it and then great courage to continue the journey.