Perspective

Have you ever heard someone say ‘let’s have a normal amount of perspective’ or ‘let’s look at the bigger picture’?

I have, many times, and I now try not to cringe every time I hear that, in response to just having been engrossed in the detail of something, because that just happens to be the trademark of my (first) thought preference.

This in itself, is both an advantage and a challenge for any writer… When detail is required to provide the reader with the ins-and-outs of a story-line, it can be your friend. But when you’re required to see the bigger picture, whether story specific or just keeping your spirits up, it can be either a friend or part-time friend, depending on the writer’s effort to ‘have a normal amount of perspective’.

And I’ve come to appreciate it and see it as a strength (most of the time), though perhaps less so when your thoughts are also never without reflection…

I was driving Simon from one winery to the next in the Yarra Valley a few days ago (part of his birthday week) and we were listening to the first decent radio station we could find, as you do when your pre-programmed stations won’t work, being out of range. And I was singing along to a song with my own made-up lyrics, just because I had never bothered to learn the proper ones (too focused on the melody), which I soon realised, shaped my perspective of the song, al be it warped.

As I was pondering that for a few moments, I then caught the last part of a news segment, talking about the ‘future’ of virtual reality changing your perspective of the house you’re living in, whenever you wear the goggles. It sounds ridiculous right now, to alter what you see when you’re in your own home, but will it be as ridiculous in decades to come? Not unlike rock music that was once ‘alternative’ in the nineties and became mainstream and commercial, as soon as ‘they’ said ‘this is pretty good’.

And I couldn’t help but wonder – what will influence the way in which we read and interpret fiction when everything around it changes? Perhaps something to explore in another blog post.

But if one’s general perspective is so unique and influenced by whatever you consciously or subconsciously decide, at least we’ll have some control over it, right?