Okay friends, for today’s Thoughtful Thursday post I wanted to talk about perspective. The other day I saw a post from a friend on Instagram and it said something along the lines of: perspective is realizing that your worst day may be someone else’s best day. I did share a Reel over on Instagram talking about this, but I wanted to share in more detail about this topic.

When I saw that Instagram post, I had just returned from a trip to Indiana to visit my family to celebrate my Mom’s birthday. On the way home, there was a technical issue with our plane, ultimately causing the airline to cancel the flight and everyone on the flight had to rebook. Rebooking a flight isn’t fun, but my next flight wasn’t leaving until evening when my first flight was supposed to leave at 12:30 in the afternoon, meaning I had to sit in the tiny Fort Wayne, Indiana airport for more than 8 hours. My rebooked flight got delayed and it looked like I was going to miss my connecting flight in Chicago. Luckily when I landed in Chicago, I realized that flight was delayed as well and by running through the Chicago airport I was able to make the connecting flight! The fun didn’t end there though. We were supposed to land in Austin at midnight, but arrived a bit early only to learn there were three other planes ahead of us waiting to unload! Some of them had been waiting for up to three hours! So, we sat at the Austin airport for another hour and a half and I was finally able to get off the plane around 1:30 in the morning!

It was a rough day no doubt, but earlier on in the day I noticed a family with two young kids and realized maybe it wasn’t so bad that I had to sit in an airport by myself and entertain myself. I also spoke with a fellow passenger who had been awake for 24 hours and had been dealing with delays and cancellations all day! So, it could be worse for me.

Something I thought of when I read my friend’s post was how lucky I am to be able to fly back to visit family. Not everyone has this privilege. I was still thankful for the time I got to spend with family in spite of my adventure to get home!

Admittedly there are times that it can be difficult to have perspective. Life can be challenging and throw us curve balls, which can be hard to navigate. Everyone experiences things in a different way, so I don’t want to invalidate anyone’s experiences but rather just highlight the complexity of human perception. We all have different experiences in life, as well as cultural and social upbringings which contribute to our perspectives. Today I just want to challenge you to be aware of these differences, perhaps helping you see the silver linings in your own life.

Another thing I was thinking about this week with regard to perspective relates to life stage. I did try my best to be present in each life stage, however I know during those growing years, when we were adding to our family, moving into homes, and raising growing children, it was hard to not look to the next phase in life longingly. There is that temptation to think it is the next phase in life that will bring joy or peace. Now having gone through many of life’s stages, I can assure you that this never happens. It’s when we lean into the moment we are in NOW that we begin to feel the joy and peace we are looking for. 

Today, as I write this, I went downtown Austin to run on the hike and bike trail before picking up my son’s college apartment key. I used to run on this trail regularly when my husband was a grad student at UT and we lived close to this trail. Every time I run on it I can’t help but think back to the days when I was pushing a jogging stroller on that trail, or pushing the jogging stroller while pregnant on that trail, or pushing a double jogging stroller! I do remember some of those days being difficult and long, but yet I have such fond memories of that time in life. I don’t think I had the perspective I have today to fully enjoy those moments and that kind of makes me sad. I drove past those apartments and it made me smile and reminded me to enjoy the moments I am in NOW. Every stage of life will have easy things and hard things about them. When we accept that, we can like I mentioned earlier lean into all the moments and just BE in them.

I hope what I’ve shared today in some way encourages or inspires you! I would love for you to leave me a comment and let me know your thoughts on the topic of perspective!