I’ve been thinking about perspective a lot lately because it keeps showing up in places I didn’t expect.
The basic idea is simple. The same situation can look completely different depending on the angle you’re standing at. There’s this kind of sculpture some artists make where from one side it just looks like a bunch of random pieces stuck together. You walk around to the other side and suddenly it forms a clear image. Same sculpture. Completely different experience.
That image has been helpful for me.
Most of the time when I get frustrated with someone, or confused by how they’re responding, it’s because I’m assuming they’re seeing what I’m seeing. I act like my angle is the whole picture. And then I get surprised when they react differently than I would.
This shows up clearly with kids. When a kid drops their candy on the ground, it can feel like the end of the world to them. As a parent, you know there are ten different ways this is going to be fine. You can get another one. It’s not a big deal. But from their angle, it might be the first piece of candy they’ve ever had. The percentage of their life that this moment takes up is massive. So of course they fall apart. It’s not that they’re being dramatic. It’s that they’re seeing it from where they’re standing.
The same thing happens in traffic. Someone cuts you off and your body wants to get angry. But if you shift the angle even a little — maybe they’re having a terrible day, maybe they’re rushing to something important — the anger doesn’t disappear completely, but it changes. It opens up space for something else to come in.
I think this is especially important in leadership and communication. When someone pushes back on an idea or sees a problem differently than I do, my first instinct is often to explain my view more clearly. What I’m slowly learning is that sometimes the better move is to ask what they’re seeing from where they’re standing. Not because I’m trying to win them over. Because I might actually be missing something.
The faith piece of this runs even deeper. Jesus doesn’t see the situation from one angle — He sees the whole thing. Every piece, every connection, every part that looks like junk from where I’m standing. And the faith I keep coming back to is the belief that He is able to turn all of it for good, even the parts that don’t make sense from my current view. That doesn’t mean I stop trying to understand what’s happening. It means I don’t have to treat my limited angle as the final word.
I don’t think the goal is to never have a point of view. I think the goal is to keep looking for perspective. Searching for what’s true requires us to see things from more than our own view. It’s the willingness to keep moving around the sculpture instead of deciding that where we’re standing is the only place that matters.
Because sometimes what looks like junk from where you’re standing is actually part of something whole. You just haven’t seen it from the right angle yet.
The sculpture metaphor in this post is inspired by the work of @tdeininger. Watch one of his sculptures shift as the angle changes: