Friday 12 October 2012

Ben Howard - Dancing in the Dark (Bruce Springsteen cover)

Perspective

  I mentioned a while ago that I've been thinking about perspective...well, here's what's been dancing around my head.
  I read somewhere, or maybe it was something I saw or heard, but the idea was: how we see ourselves can cage us. 
 Does your own view of yourself lock you up, tie you up with tight strings into the picture of who you ought to be? 

 When you hold up the glass to your own life, does the lens you look through allow you to see all you are, or does it limit and restrict what you see?

  Does this question make you squirm in your seat?  Does it bring to mind scalding words you are painfully aware helped shape what you see? Does it dig up the shame you felt in the face of failure and stop you from spreading your wings in attempt to fly again?  Does it remind you of all the hopes and dreams you had that you long ago abandoned for this, that, and the other thing.
  We've all lived through moments like these, I surely have. Maybe unlike me, you don't think about stuff like this at all.

  I've always been a girl with really big dreams, my head has always been (to some extent) lost in the clouds, and I'm no stranger to wanting to reach out and touch the stars.  I may dream, I may even test the waters conservatively from time to time, but somewhere along my journey I began to believe that they were just dreams, that I wouldn't touch the stars or knock those really big goals off my list.   

  Why does this happen? Or better still, how?

  I'm not the jaded sort, I'm not a negative thinker, I'm not the girl who stays down long when she gets knocked off the horse; far from it actually.  I'm the glass is half full, always look on the bright side, whenever God closes a door - somewhere He opens a window, sort of girl.  So how is it that I could give up on myself before I ever fully explored my potential?

  I'm stuck on that one...but I'm betting I'm not the only one!

  Recently I've begun to evaluate what I see when I take a good look at myself. I've been flipping the pages back to find out exactly when I put myself on a shelf and walked away, when I stopped using my voice, and why it was okay to step back and allow myself to be caged by what I saw, or sadly, by what other people thought I should be.
  Maybe the more important point is that I've come back to the shelf, and I'm dusting myself off.  
  Those dreams are still there.  They may have reshaped themselves, but the big ones are there, and my hope is that I will continue to discover what I've been hiding!
  
  So perspective.  It's a funny thing, and though I have likely way over-thought it, I feel new; a little dusty- (tripping over my own feet), unused, and about to conservatively step out of my cage.
  I feel good.  I feel on the cusp of greatness.  I feel like that moment when the sun peeks over the horizon and a new day and all its beauty is about to burst forth.  That's it, I feel as though I'm about to break out of me, and be who I'm supposed to be.  I don't have it together yet, (and what I see as 'together' today, may be altogether different for tomorrow), but each step, each thought, each moment is a push in the direction of getting me to where I need to be.

Perspective
  
  I've never listened to the words of this song before, in all honesty, I just didn't like it.  So I likely changed the station or skipped over it when it came on....it never spoke to me, and that's ok.
 That's the old me!  I found a new way to hear it.  A new voice, a new arrangement, a different Perspective! I love it now.  I really do, and I hear more in the words than may have been intended.
  A little perspective can do so much to change what you see, what you hear, and how you go about doing what you do!
  Enjoy the view from where you are!  Open your eyes and see things differently, challenge yourself in the dusty corners of your life, clean the lens you look through, find a new spark and leave the cage behind. 

Happy Happy Bright Shiny Friday!!

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