I’ve snagged myself the corner cubby at work. We’ve moved into a new hipster office space and it’s come with soft mood lighting, more akin to a coffee shop. There’s an open kitchen on one side of the room and a set of long communal tables to work from. Low-fi plays from the speakers, and in the downstairs studio space, people hold meetings out in the open. That bit is rather annoying.
While I’ve tried to embrace this new office space that everyone has just raged about, if I’m honest, I like my allocated desk, my chair with back support and my armrests adjusted to my height.
My colleague, J, must sense this about me. When she asked how I was doing, I did the thing we always do, I used the word that I’ve come to despise: Fine. I’m fine. It’s fine. We’re all fine. I shower and dress and move through the days. I write. I do the necessary bits. I’m baking more. I’m brightened by the idea of Christmas ahead. But it also means another year has gone by.
She picked up on the strain, though, and when I gave an exasperated sigh about the early darkness since the clocks changed, she simply said, “But you get an hour earlier in the morning. You’re a morning person; this is your perfect time.” With a wide smile, she threw her arms in the air, “It’s just perspective, isn’t it?”
It’s strange to have a perspective pointed out to you, especially one so glaringly obvious that you wonder, how do I always end up with the wrong point of view? And I guess that’s the thing: when you’re so close to something, you cannot see any other view except the narrow frames you’ve put yourself in. When we feel small and tired and insignificant, everything feels a bit end-of-the-world. We can’t enjoy the truly wonderful things because we’re looking at the problem that’s, instead, sitting right at our feet, tugging at our pants, reminding us of its sore existence.
It takes effort to change that. To turn the narrative around. From the inside, there is only the belief that there is a singular perspective, that nothing else is true, but that in itself is a fallacy.
When we make that conscious effort to step back and look at what we’re given, we see the pool of possibilities in front of us.
The new office space, though a longer commute, means I get to ride the bus to work. I grab a window seat and people-watch from the top deck. I can explore new coffee shops north of the city. I get to walk right along Regent’s canal, ducks and geese bobbing along in the water, during my lunch break. In the summer, it will be an amazing location to be in. The bigger space means more meeting rooms, which means I can stop standing by the kitchen sink to host calls, which was an issue in our last place.
When the reality dawns on us, we see it as if for the first time and there’s a sort of magical illusion that breaks over us. We remove the blinders and think, maybe it’s not so terrible after all.
J didn’t come in armed to solve all my problems or offer advice. Hell, all she did was give a nugget of positive energy that she carries around. She met me where I was: as a grumpy, singular-perspective human being.
Maybe I’m easily influenced and believe others too quickly, but maybe it doesn’t take all that much to make a difference. To ourselves or anyone else. Maybe it all just takes a little bit of perspective.