What do you do to help see your world from a different perspective?
Around 2014 the first privately own drones with cameras attached started to launch and the unmanned eye in the sky for video geeks like myself took off. I bought my first drone in 2018 and for the first year of ownership, I took it with me everywhere. Each time I saw something that I wanted to see from the air, I would stop and fly. Flying up to a skyscraper, a steel bridge, a church spire, or whatever was always thrilling to me and the more I did it the more I wanted to do it. Recently while editing together my new compilation of best shots I stopped to ask myself, why do I like to do this so much? And the answer I got was enlightening.
Sitting there watching shot after shot from the air I realized that my biggest fascination with this all was perspective. Being able to fly up next to something that I'd previously only seen from the ground offered me a new point of view. Watching the world swirl around behind an object while I moved in close gave a thrill and sense of newfound power. And seeing myself, off-camera, as a small dot on the horizon gave me both a sense of how insignificant I was on the landscape of the world around me and significant in my ability to direct the perspective from which I looked at it.
The experience of flying a drone both physically and the metaphor offered by its visual perspective got me thinking about how we find our perspective in life. Being able to step back from the world we live in and see how we fit into it all is an essential part of finding and retaining our purpose in life. Applying that then too the day-to-day becomes a key component in feeling a sense of significants. And uncovering and returning to those moments consistently to gain that perspective allows us to see the forest from the trees, and connect the dots between what matters and how we're orienting ourselves towards those things that are beneficial.
For me, my orientation is working to make the world a better place than when I arrived. I try to do that through my work, my writing, and working to pass on what little wisdom may come my way to you. In my continual awareness of how insignificant I am the landscape of the world, I am able to find some significance in this small contribution to each of you. And that makes my short time here on this planet a little more worthwhile.
What about you? What do you do to try to see your world from a different perspective? How does that impact your day-to-day?
Share with me, I always love hearing from each of you!
Thanks for reading,
Barry Walton
**Wanna great doc that will offer some new perspective? Watch, The Furthest - Voyager in Space (maybe my new favorite).
