Perspective

What do you do when you get lost?

Not lost in a good book or lost in his eyes.

But truly lost...confused, turned around, misplaced, misdirected.

Have you ever been lost? Have you ever allowed yourself to lose your way, move out of your element, be the tossed ship at sea in the middle of a storm. Put yourself in a place where you don't see any landmarks you recognize. A place where the GPS is clueless and the neighborhood is changing from posh to poverty. Where you are in unstable and/or unsafe surroundings.

That's the type of lost I am talking about. You can get there by accident, by mistake...or you can choose to go there. Doesn't matter.

A complete loss of perspective. Nothing familiar to grab onto. No breadcrumbs to follow.

What do you do? What have you done in the past? What would you do now?

I guess there are some who choose to wait it out, stay close to what they know. Maybe instead of foraging forward into a scenario they are unsure of, they hang back...afraid, tentative. Do they have perspective? Maybe...but only in terms of the perspective a fish may have of its fishtank. Confined, constrained. No way out. Possibly distorted and myopic. Can't make out much of anything past the boundaries of the glass container. No lush details to expand perspective and outlook on life. (not to mention that a fish can't breathe out of water ~ a topic for another post).

Not really lost...only afraid. Fear holding perspective hostage.

There are expanding variations of this 'cage' metaphor, of course. The barred cage where one can see the outside and the detail but still can't get there. This connotes a certain longing to be free but an inability to break the chains.

If the fish breaks the boundaries of the bowl, like Nemo, or the lion escapes the pride and can roam freely, like Simba, what next?

First, an immediate change of perspective from the comfortable to the distressing. The lines that were drawn within the previous boundaries are broken and ineffective. They either must be re-drawn or extended and tweaked to fit the new environment.


Panic may ensue; questioning of self and purpose. Flight or fight.


Flight will feed the fear and thus strengthen the captor. Fight will break the captor and free the hostage, and hence allow new lines to be drawn.

Drawing these new lines leads to the discovery of new touchpoints, new bread crumbs, new landmarks.

Shortcuts, scenic routes, fresh concepts....

New lines....fresh perspective.

Purging the fear and releasing the hostage.

Baz Luhrmann said it in Everybody's Free: "Do one thing every day that scares you."

What scares you? What makes you feel lost and confused? What makes you uncomfortable?

Do it and free your mind, your soul, to experience a brand new perspective. After all, if you don't do the things that scare you, and you don't open up your perspective, how can you ever hope to find the beauty and perfection, the pure freedom, that God has planned for you?