The Crucial Value of Perspective

Monday, August 25, 2014


Some time earlier this year I discovered Michele Rosenthal.  I have yet to meet Michele in person but I must say I am very impressed and encouraged by the depth of her passion for healing.  Michele is another person walking in the world who knows the experience of trauma.  I do not know the intimate details of the trauma that impacted her.  In some sense it isn't necessary to know the full details of other people's traumatic experiences as a prerequisite to making meaningful connections with other people actively seeking their own healing.  Without knowing the finer details of Michele's life I can comfortably affirm that Michele's passion shows through in her work.

I thought to reference Michele when I read an article posted on LinkedIn.  For anyone reading this who lives under a rock LinkedIn is one of the most popular online sites for active and talented individuals looking to develop a network of like minded people.  You can find the article I am referring to here.  I especially enjoyed reading this article not only because the article is informed by her own personal experience but also because her emphasis on the importance of perspective is something I believe is very important.

Perspective is so important...to life in general.  And perspective is especially important when we are healing from trauma.  Why?  Because the perspective we carry about life can be easily damaged by trauma.  In the article Michele recounts how she "never looked at (my) healing as an exciting event."  This perspective (before deep healing has been underway for a significant period of time) doesn't strike me as atypical.  I didn't feel especially excited about the beginning of my own process of intensive healing when I began in the summer of 2013.  I effectively felt too overwhelmed, anxious, angry, bitter and frightened to feel calm enough to muster any excitement.  Feeling excited felt very risky.  Of all the consequences of trauma I think the loss of hope or even the loss of the ability or willingness to hope is one of the most unfortunate.  It's one thing to keep trying to improve your circumstances in the face of discouragement and yet still possess hope.  It's quite another when your hope dies.

Trauma, especially trauma that lasts a long time or is extremely severe (what Dr. Judith Herman of Harvard University might suggest can lead to the development of 'Complex PTSD'), can be a fundamentally isolating and extremely destructive experience for the human psyche.  Self-imposed isolation can be an adaptive response not unlike when animals hide away for some time after a devastating event such as a massive forest fire.  I think another of the most unfortunate aspects of trauma is when our capacity to maintain a healthy perspective (i.e. this too shall pass) is seriously damaged by trauma.  When we begin to expect hardship, suffering and untrustworthy people to continually predominate the fabric of our daily lives it is quite possible that trauma has left a serious mark on us.

Michele is correct to note that much of trauma healing "has to do with reframing events, perceptions and memories."  It's the negative, self-destructive ideas about self we may develop in response to trauma that often prove especially problematic.  The sum of such distorted thinking acts much like a computer program with an insidious virus embedded in it.  As long as our minds are contaminated by a repetitive pattern of negative thinking (much like a defective line of computer code causes a computer system crash) we will not be able to maintain a healthy perspective.  In other words, limited thinking is the foundation from which we may create limited circumstances that ultimately are far less than what we can ultimately create.

Having pursued as much formal education as I have I believe the following words spoken by Einstein are timely to quote:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

In order to heal and create a better life for ourselves we need both knowledge and imagination.  We will do best when we have both.  But if we had to choose it would be wise to retain our imaginations and forsake whatever knowledge we possess.  I believe it's much easier to acquire knowledge than it is to cultivate imagination.  We can learn new ways to think, live and be at any age.  You can teach an old dog new tricks.  I am no expert on the development of human imagination but it is my impression that the faculty of human imagination is most responsive to conscious cultivation in the earliest years of our lives.  To rephrase in more simplistic terms: we would be wise to stimulate the imaginative abilities of children.

So why am I speaking of imagination when I first wrote of perspective?  I am speaking of imagination because it is so intimately connected to perspective.  If you cannot even imagine the possibility of holding a radically different perspective on your current life circumstances or what may be possible in the future how will you even motivate yourself to try to change your life through action?  In my experience a fruitful, productive, enjoyable life can be more easily pursued when we attempt to find a balance between action and contemplation.  We need to balance the time we do with the time that we simply are.

A pile of books offers the knowledge contained within them.  What does a box of crayons offer?  They offer to help you create whatever you can imagine creating.  Can you tell the difference?