perspective

Just like that the sun disappeared & the blue & black clouds rolled in with their billowing hang in the air. An ominous moving mass, heavy & loaded with precipitation. The temperature didn't drop, but the wind certainly picked up. Quickly we scurried into the house waiting for hell to blow over...which it did as quickly as it blew in. 


The rushing water was still pouring down the driveways into the streets while the clouds busted apart & began letting the suns rays push back through. It wasn't a particularly warm rain, as it was only late May in Minnesota, but the ground was hot from the unseasonably sweltering ninety-two-degree day. The air felt steamy as the winds left. 


Some things never change...out into the ending mist I romp with my children to stomp in the puddles & let the dwindling rushing water pass around my feet. I trudge into the gutter & became a barrier against the water. As I looked down, for whatever reason, it caught my eye. There I was. Or, should I say, my Peter Pan shadow rippled on  the surface in front of me. Time at that moment had no boundary. There was no clear picture of this person who's reflection touched from my toes. Just a rippling, waffling shadow of someone.


Most days that's how I feel. That's my perspective on my life. Just this shape of a person, obviously solid in form, but with an outer edge that morphs & changes with the surrounding environment. An analogy of my life danced in the water flowing past me in the gutter...who am I?


Perspective is like karma, it presents itself in the most everyday moments. Here I stand reveling in creating a rapid in the chilly water, regressing into my childhood feeling free & connected with the spring rain! Stomping & splashing in the water like it was the first time & I am stopped by my reflection of my shadowy-self. Things that make you go hhhmmm.


Some might have stopped & said their silhouette looks pretty good in that shadow or they see themselves as taller. Some would not notice that shadow at all. Yet others would kick water into it as if to make it disappear, disgusted with their reflection. Their transference of self. For me I internalize the connection to my feet & am tickled inside with the fleeting thought of Dr. Suess in this almost nonsensical moment with "Oh, the Places You'll Go". 

"You have brains in your head.

 You have feet in your shoes.

 You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

 You're on your own.

 And you know what you know.

 And YOU are the gal who'll decide where to go...

 Oh the Place You'll Go!"

And with that moment, it fleets away as quickly as the water, as I move to create a damn with my feet so the water rushes up too my shins! My children are impressed...and in that present moment of my being, my shadow has lost my attention as quickly as it had caught it.


But upon later reflection, it gave me food for thought in really who am I & how does my perspective influence me? Is it intertwined with experience? Does it influence automatically like my lungs breath & my heart pumps blood? Or is it intentional critical thought? Did I transcend from being an observer to being an inquirer? A questioner? A critical thinker? 


Not likely...just easily distracted & I have the innate ability to see things in a different way. They have diagnosed me with ADHD, so there's my claim to distractability fame. 


Kinda rolls off the tongue fun doesn't it!
"Claim to distractability fame" (LOL!)


Maybe it was the drug use in the earlier years? 
   That affects everything. 
Maybe it's all the prescription meds I took to make me not have such a distorted perspective?
To grasp reality better & function on a more even playing field.
Residual? 
   Could be?
Flashbacks?
   Not anymore, thank God!!


NNNAAAAAAHHHH....it's just who I am & how I am evolving, 
I say to me...Right on Chica'! And trudging in the rain swollen gutters with blurts of...
Oh the Places I'll Go!
(Let's hope I ALWAYS make it back...)