Coming into Focus

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at will change.” Wayne Dyer

When I was in college I studied abroad in Florence, Italy. During a trip to Rome we visited the Vatican and St. Peter’s Square. If you’ve been there or seen pictures, you know that the square is surrounded by 2 half-circle structures supported by hundreds of columns set several deep. If you stand in just the right spot, though, the columns disappear behind one another and the structure you’re looking at appears as a half-circle of single columns.

I feel like life is often like that. You can look at things from all different angles and appreciate various facets of them. You shift a little this way, and a little that way. You think you found the best spot, the one that really hits the mark – but then you step a little more to one side and, almost magically, the vision clicks into place. And you realize this is how you were meant to view it. You just had to work for it a bit.

The quote above is one I recently stumbled across and loved. The end of last year, as various blog posts and the end of year silence likely indicated, I floundered. For reasons both known and fuzzy, I felt overwhelmed and unable to focus. But as the year closed, it seems as though I shifted in a way that landed me on just the right spot. And things fell into place.

I know I’ll be overwhelmed and fuzzy again in the future, but for right now, I’m thrilled to start the year feeling clean and strong and focused. It’s funny, because nothing really changed – but apparently changing my perspective was all that I needed.