Change Perspective

The other day, looking up and over through a drizzle at the mighty Bay Bridge, I watched a Muni bus running its route from Treasure Island into the City proper.

The island was long a Navy base but now it is a neighborhood of sorts, out in the middle of the Bay.

The bus looked tiny from my vantage point, near the Ferry Building, but still substantial once my brain's eye had calculated the relative distances involved, plus it was moving at quite an impressive speed.

You could certainly tell it wasn't rush hour.

What went through my head was how everything is relative, dependent so much on our perspective of the moment.

From a couple hundred feet up, we look like mice; a bit further out, we appear like ants; further still we disappear but our buses still move about visibly. Eventually they disappear too, of course.

Back inside our own body, we can take ourselves quite seriously, as if our every move matters. But from a certain distance we're nothing but mice, ants, or completely invisible.

My point, if there is one, may be that we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously. A related point is that if we can just wait long enough, our perspective may change, and we might gain a new insight into our predicament.

It is best, in this way of thinking, to not act rashly, on the basis of incomplete information.

In a related way, albeit obliquely, everything about our lives can be altered to better conform with out wishes. It's strange how often we leave ourselves, our ability to act, to reach out to others, out of the equation.

I've written about myself that I often remain passive in the face of life's daily, weekly and monthly offerings. That works sometimes, but it also carries a certain price.

If we want things to change, we have to change things.

Nothing very profound here, just the ramblings of a guy watching at a bus speeding across a bridge in the rain.

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