12 Feb A Wider View
If someone asked us to sketch a map of the world from memory, most of us would place where we live somewhere near the center. That’s simply how perspective works. The place where our life has unfolded becomes the point everything else is oriented around.
I was reminded of that years ago after a long travel day to Denmark. Two-year-old Ella looked around the airport, completely spent and a little bewildered, and said, with total sincerity, “Wait… we’re still in the same world?” There was a soft amazement in her voice as she took in how different everything looked. The signs, the sounds, the low hum of conversation around us in Danish, the rhythm of movement. She was trying to make sense of how it could feel so unfamiliar and still somehow be the same place we had left.
That same instinct follows us into how we make sense of other people and approach with empathy. Our experiences feel like the obvious reference point, so it can be easy to forget that so many stories, ideas, and inner worlds are unfolding right alongside ours that we have never stepped inside. When we pause long enough to notice that other perspectives exist, something opens. We begin to wonder what the same moment might look or feel like from where someone else is standing.
I felt a version of that while watching the Super Bowl halftime performance this year. I didn’t understand much of the language, and still the emotion came through clearly. The music pulsed across the field, the dancers moved in rhythm, and color and sound were layered together in a way that carried a feeling of joy even without translation.
Like performances in languages that aren’t our own, conversations give us those openings again and again and invite us into lives we would never otherwise step into. There’s something generous about that aspect of being human, that we aren’t limited to only what we’ve personally known. In these moments, we can hold difference and connection at the same time, noticing how varied people’s lives are while still recognizing familiar threads running through us all.
There is something freeing in realizing that stepping even slightly out of the center makes the world feel wider. It brings me back to that airport moment, to a tired two-year-old looking around at a place that felt nothing like home, trying to understand how everything could be so different and still be the same.
How lucky we are to have opportunities to see how much exists beyond our own limited view.