Most of us spend our lives trying to change our lives.
A better job.
A better marriage.
More money.
Better health.
A different church.
A different city.
A different president.
There's nothing wrong with any of that.
But something has always puzzled me.
Two people can live through the same experience...
...and emerge with completely different lives.
One becomes bitter.
The other becomes grateful.
One gives up.
The other finds purpose.
One sees an ending.
The other sees a beginning.
The event is the same.
So what changed?
I've been chasing that question for years.
At first, I thought the turning points in my own life were obvious.
A conversation.
A relationship.
A failure.
A success.
Standing in Egypt.
Walking through Ghana.
Those were the moments that changed me.
Or so I thought.
Looking back, I see something different.
Egypt didn't hand me a new life.
Ghana didn't hand me a new life.
No conversation ever reached inside me and rearranged who I was.
But after each one, I could never quite see the world the same way again.
That feels important.
Not because I gained something.
Because I began seeing something I couldn't see before.
---
People often say,
"That's just your perspective."
What they usually mean is,
"We're both entitled to our opinions."
I'm beginning to think perspective has very little to do with opinion.
A child doesn't see the world the way a parent does.
An apprentice doesn't see what a master sees.
An astronaut doesn't see the Earth the way the rest of us do.
Not because one person is superior.
Because one person can see more.
Perspective isn't merely different.
It develops.
---
Then another realization quietly arrived.
We all live inside stories.
The problem isn't that we have them.
The problem is believing the chapter we're living is the whole book.
For a long time, I understood myself through a story that was true.
It just wasn't complete.
Every meaningful turning point in my life did the same thing.
It didn't erase the story.
It expanded it.
The chapter remained.
The book got bigger.
Maybe that's what growth really is.
Not becoming someone else.
Discovering your life belongs to something larger than you imagined.
---
We've been taught that wisdom comes from accumulating knowledge.
I'm no longer sure that's true.
Knowledge gives us more information.
Perspective reveals more relationships.
Knowledge tells us more.
Perspective allows us to see more.
And seeing more has a strange effect.
You begin making different choices without trying.
The world hasn't changed.
You have.
Or perhaps more accurately...
the world you can participate in has changed.
Because you cannot participate in a reality you cannot see.
---
So I've stopped asking one question.
"How can I change my life?"
Lately I've been asking a different one.
What perspective would allow me to see more reality than I see today?
I've noticed something.
Not every new experience expanded my perspective.
But every expanded perspective changed my experience.
Which leaves me with a question I can't quite shake.
What if the most important changes in our lives begin not with changing our circumstances...
...but with expanding our perspective?
When I moved back to Minnesota after 40 years I began learning the real story about our history with the indigenous peoples of this area. I also began to meet and learn from Anishinaabe friends of friends here.
Learning to see with eyes and mind unconditioned by colonialism and missionary christianity has become a metronome for my heart. White guilt is very sneaky and resists even small changes in perspective let alone the fierce acceptance of honesty and ownership without the need for “feeling better”.
As you know, Minnesota is going through deep racial purging these days. Chaos is a necessary part of real change