While waiting on the checkout line at Target a woman pulls up behind me with two wagons of patio furniture.She has one of those tabloids and quickly flips the pages, stops, and with a look of concern on her face, reads an article. She reaches for her cell phone. "Hi honey!" she exclaims with a high frequency pitch, "listen, I just checked out my horoscope and it says that I need to spend more time outdoors. I need to take in the summer sun and I will become inspired to do wonderful things!"then continuing in the next breath, "listen, I'm at Target and that Patio furniture we were looking at is on sale, so I'm picking it up!" There was a moment of silence, a noticable expression of disapproval and a subdued, "OK, I'll see you later, bye."
She noticed my stare and expression of disbelief. "Did he actually buy that explanation?" I asked with a broad grin. She smiled back, "nah, he is the same sign as me, he just told me "whatever", then explained that his friend just called and asked him to go fishing on his boat, and his horoscope said he needed to be in the sun too!" Then with a frown, "now I'm going to have to unload this out of the truck and carry it into the backyard myself!"
I turned, a message flashed in my mind like a large billboard that you see on the highway. "We all see the same the thing, we just see it with a different point of view."
The gauntlet was now thrown. My mind tangled with this message. Can it be? All our lives, we look at the same thing and see it differently? I began processing images, a box of chocolates...heavenly to some, deadly and unwanted if you are a diabetic.Marriage, sex, work, food, art, I went through them all and no matter which image I brought up, I could hear two different points of view for each! Goodness! It's a miracle that we can even get along!
My approach to this became forensic, pulling apart moment by moment to find an element that universally we can all see, and have the same point of view! My investigation left me with two such moments in our life, birth and death. A newborn infant, the sight of one has us pause and smile. Even little children, when they see a newborn infant are magnetically drawn to the preciousness and delicateness an infant posseses. Simply, there is nothing as precious and delicate. ....The other element that we all see the same way, the sight of a person that has passed away. Whether we know them or not,the sight of person has all of pause and reflect. Our reflection can be different, but the sight will have us pause and think.
"That's it?" I asked myself. Birth and death are the only images that we can see and have the same point of view", and everything inbetween is open to personal interpretation? "It can't be!" I said. I became overwhelmed with a wave of depression."Life is just too precious for us to march through it and not be in some sort of agreement about what we see!" When I worded it in that form, the answer became apparent! "Life", yes,seconds, minutes, hours,days, seasons, years....each so very precious! It is so precious that it does not matter if we all see it with the same point of view. It matters only if YOU see it that way! When you see each new day as precious as newborn, it will be filled with your love and kindness. And a day with YOUR love and kindness added to it....is something that is universally seen in the same warm and wonderful light!
Wishing you all a wonderful day and a front row seat with this point of view!
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