Every morning my dogs and I walk in the woods.

When you go to the same place every day, you know each turn and hill.  After storms, I’ve seen fallen trees and large branches blocking major paths and entrances into the park. I joked once to a fellow dog walker that Spirits lived in the woods and threw the trees down to keep us out.  

However, one morning a couple of weeks ago, on a day without a breeze, the dogs and I hustled along our normal route and heard a large crack.  A huge branch, something that would have killed us had it been overhead, broke off a large red pine and crashed to the ground. The Earth shook, and we jumped although we weren’t in any danger. Thankfully, the branch broke off  in the woods far enough from the path. 

The echoing thud, while a safe distance from us, caused me to ponder—perhaps all this time, the Spirits in the woods were protecting us, not trying to scare us away. The trees and large branches across the paths consistently came down in the night when no one was walking in the woods.  No one had ever been hurt. I saw the situation in a new light. I had changed my perspective.

What a difference perspective makes. It truly can turn your world around. What’s the different between seeing a glass half full or a glass half empty? Absolutely everything. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we struggle daily with our choices of how we look at every action and reaction in our lives. To paraphrase influencer Wayne Dyer, if you don’t like the way things look, change the way you look at things.  In other words, adopt a different perspective.

Perspective is needed now more than ever. You may be annoyed or anxious about the current event we’re living through. For some, it is deadly. For some, it is financially devastating. If you face neither, be grateful. View this pause in our world as an opportunity to slow down, to catch our breaths, to reconnect. Get out in nature. Call your family members.  Keep your perspective.