Saturday, July 3, 2010

Perspective

Man. Two posts in one day :). Let's just say I've been doing a lot of thinking this week, and just need to get it out! Haha.

This one comes from a slightly disturbing dream I had the other night. I've debated whether or not to go into full detail of the dream, as it might take some back stories to fully understand :) so I will do my best to describe it to you. After many years of my crazy detailed dreams, I've learned to try and deduce why I have certain dreams...perhaps it was due to a conversation I had before I fell asleep, or a picture I came across. So this one, I am going to attribute the bulk of it to the many episodes of Friday Night Lights I've been watching these past few weeks!

Here we go. It starts out that I'm walking through Disneyland, and I run into a person I haven't seen in years, a friend of my ex's in central california. We do the normal conversation, and then he tells me that Andrew, my ex, is there at Disneyland too, and he's going to meet him. He insists I come too. All of the sudden, I'm carrying an infant in my arms, only it's not my child...but Andrew and his wife's. The friend and I were trying to find them to bring the kid back to them. This baby was just heavenly :). So cute, and happy. Anyway, then the scene changes from Disneyland to a high school football game. I'm walking with the infant through the stands, and I meet up with Andrew's wife, like we've been friends for years. I sit down with her, and we turn to the field. There he is, down there on the field, coaching the football game. He smiles up to us, and we both wave to him. Oddly enough, there is a big screen at this football game, and apparently they are honoring Andrew for something, so it's like they play this movie of his life. It goes through some early on scenes when he was growing up, playing football (which is hilarious because in reality, he didn't AT ALL), then there's all these scenes from our relationship. Some good times, laughter, smiling, him asking me to marry him...then it turns sour...heartbreak, he leaves me because I couldn't have a child with him. Then, a scene much like the one I'm sitting in...me in the stands and him on the field...I'm crying and decide to leave the stands. He sees me leave and tries to run after me. At that point in the dream I look down to Andrew on the field, and he's crying now, looking at me - and I just can't handle it anymore...I get up and leave. This time he doesn't run after me, but his wife does. And when she catches me, I explain to her how I'd never looked at things from his perspective. Then the dream ends.

You have to know that when I woke up, an hour and a half before my alarm, I just lied there, staring into space completely dumbfounded by it all. What in the world, why on earth am I dreaming about my ex? Still don't really understand that, but oh well. It wasn't real, but it sure felt real. And at that point I understood that something within me was kicking me in the pants, reminding me that sometimes we must consider perspective in our relationships.

So often, our situations are exactly that, our situations. We simply see things from our perspective, our point of view, how things affect us. Very rarely do we take the chance to step away and consider what the other person (or people) might be thinking, what has spurred their actions or words. In the dream, that Leanna was simply heartbroken that he would leave her. She never saw things from his perspective. And she definitely didn't see or know that when it all came to an end, he ran after her.

I said it before, and I'll repeat it, none of this was real :), and I'm not secretly pining for my ex. But how many other situations have I been in lately where I've refused to see things from another's point of view? And how many times have I tried and not been allowed to know what goes on in someone else's thoughts to lead to their actions? In all honesty, it's quite frustrating. There's a couple of relationships in trouble right now in my life, some involving me, some not...but in all of them I desire perspective. And more than just being able to be a witness, but to also understand. I'm going to keep trying. Keep my eyes open in hopes that something is gained. Because, really, I have to wonder how perhaps outcomes would change if we all were to step outside of ourselves and take perspective...

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