Change the Way You Look at Things

Excerpt from Daily Cures, Wisdom for Healthy Aging by Connie Mason Michaelis

Look and listen closer!

Wayne Dyer was an internationally renowned author and speaker in the field of self-development. One of my favorite quotes from him is, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” There was a widely circulated story about a father traveling with three young children on a commuter train. The kids were out of control, running up and down the aisles, yelling and shouting. Finally, one of the disgruntled commuters approached the father and asked him to take control of his kids because they were disturbing everyone around them. Suddenly, the father looked up through his tears and apologized, saying they had just left the hospital where he took the young ones to see their mom, who was dying of cancer, and he was so distraught that he hadn’t even noticed what his kids were doing. Suddenly, everyone around them felt ashamed of their judgment. Their irritation turned to compassion and empathy.

Is there a chance that the older we get, the way we look at things might broaden?  Isn’t that what wisdom is about: learning to withhold judgment and give the benefit of the doubt? It goes without saying that we’ve had lots of time to make plenty of mistakes ourselves, and if we’ve learned anything, it should be tolerance, patience, and open-mindedness, right? Well, it seems that it is not always true. Sometimes, older people become more close-minded and rigid. We live in a time where tolerance is in low supply, and we suffer from a shortage of generosity and acceptance. I believe the older we get, we should be beacons of wisdom. We don’t want to be slow in our physical movements, but we should be proud to be slow to anger, slow to blame, slow to judge. We can give ourselves the luxury of changing our minds. Go slow because it may be time to change the way we look at things, so the things we look at will change.