A Greater Perspective

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As I was flipping through the images to choose from for this week's blog post assignment, I immediately paused at the sight of this picture. I instantly felt an emotional connection to the people in this image. I love to go hiking. This past summer I went on a ten day backpacking trip throughout the mountains of New Mexico. My favorite part about climbing mountains is that sensation you get when you're higher up looking down on where you've come from. The best is when you reach the very top of a mountain. The biggest accomplishment my crew made was reaching the top of the Tooth. From the tip of the tooth we could see our entire journey so far (about 9 days). I think what I love most about this experience is that I feel a sense of divinity. I feel like I can see things with a greater perspective similar to the way God would see them.




The first sentence of the description paragraph reads, "Habits are hard to change". For these people it had been a habit of theirs to sit on the window ledges of their rural homes. I'd like to think that the got a similar satisfaction out of this as I do from mountains. It is likely that they sat there to ponder or maybe even to pray. Because "habits are hard to change" they continued to sit on the ledges of their windows when they moved to apartments in the city. The height didn't scare them. While some of the people in this photograph sit alone pondering and viewing their world in a different way, others sit with friends and family likely keeping up a conversation. Just as I bonded with the girls in my crew as we climbed to the tops of mountains together, I believe that the simple act of sitting together on their window ledge served to strengthen friendships.

I feel that the people in this photograph have realized something that many Americans have a difficulty understanding. Our lives are spent moving from one thing to the next. When we do have down time it is often spent on facebook, pinterest, or checking email. Rarely do we sit, breathe, and think. Rarely do we have time to acknowledge the beauty of this Earth and let the spirit whisper peace to our hearts. Rarely do we have time to just sit and talk or even to not talk at all and just enjoy each others' company. I know that I could improve my life by incorporating these moments of peace into my busy schedule one way or the other and I hope that you will too.

Salgado, Sebastiao.  Photograph.  “Migrations: Humanity in Transition”.  Aperture.  New York, 2000.  430-31