My 81 year old mother has been staying with me recently and one of the continuing challenges for her is to find the right door to her bedroom. I must admit that it isn't an easy thing to determine. I have a long white hallway with six possible white doors all of which we keep closed in order to keep numerous cats and dogs from getting into things they shouldn't. She always walks hesitantly down the hallway, finally locating a possible room, opens the door and... sometimes finds herself in my daughter's bedroom, sometimes a closet and sometimes (hooray!) her own room. Chronically challenged by directions myself, I can empathize with the difficulty of the task. One recent afternoon, my son-in-law was using the printer in my daughter's bedroom. While he is printing, he hears the door to the bedroom open and in steps my mom, obviously lost again. "You got the wrong room," he points out to her. She laughs and says to him, "Yeah, you too..."
It's all in our perspective isn't it? How easy it is to become set in a routine way of looking at the world, a problem or even ourselves. Before you accept the status quo, make sure you first ask ourself if there is another, perhaps better way to interpret your 'reality'. Can you see it through someone else's eyes? Can you eliminate common assumptions and create a new way to view things? There is rarely one right way to view the world, so make sure your mind is open to new creative possibilities. You may just find out that there's more than one person in the wrong room...
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.Dream. Discover. Mark Twain
Yikes...I think I might be in the wrong room sometimes too so thanks for the reminder.
ReplyDelete