Missing Perspectives

Sitting in the atrium of a local hotel this past week, I was watching the various guests and their families.  Some wore masks and continued to practice social distancing, but the vast majority were not.  Life had returned to normal -- whatever that definition meant for each family.  Elevators were full; lines were formed; people jostled to be first or to get what was perceived as theirs.  After going through 15 months of caution, safety in isolation, and being careful, I wondered if we had seen or shared the same reality.

Watching the hotel elevators rise and fall in their designated shafts, I also wondered if our thinking is as siloed as these elevators:  rising and falling with only our own cargo of thoughts and lived experiences.

What do you miss when siloed in your thinking?

I continued to reflect on this line of thought as we ventured out into the San Diego Zoo.  California had just fully reopened one week earlier, yet the zoo was full:  tourists from all over the country had returned to San Diego.  Are we any safer than before while many people remain unvaccinated?  How is it that the virus can mutate and have variants yet we as humans don't allow variations in our own thinking?  What is normal about our every day lives when we can no longer see another perspective?

Standing outside the giraffe enclosure, I wondered: even with their long necks, giraffes can only see as far as their eyesight allows and the direction they face.  What are we seeing?  Which singular direction are we facing?  How can we possibly expect to see another perspective unless we improve our eyesight... change our position... or rely on others?

Is there only one perspective to be seen?

We ended our stay at the zoo with the flamingos, located at the beginning or front of the zoo.  There was noise and commotion, birds vying for attention or sitting peacefully on nests.  Maybe life is like this:  messy... noisy... varied... confusing.  Is that the normal we are returning to?  Or is normal a false security of siloed thinking?

Rather than staying in our single-shafted visions of normalcy that rise and fall with our cargo of thoughts, maybe we are encouraged to explore new Ways of Being.

How do we nurture new life?

Questions to consider this week:

• What did I learn from the months of COVID-separation?
• Are there variations of thoughts that scare me?
• Can I seek a normal that allows shared experiences AND different perspectives to coexist?

May we mourn the missing perspectives we don't see.

Larry Gardepie

Dialogue San Diego Consulting

(click on link for website)