When a change in perspective does the trick
Visitors frolic in the snow at Heckscher Park in Huntington Village Monday. Credit: Kathy M Helgeson
To get from the back door around the garage and out to the garbage cans, I dug a path barely the width of one shovel, a concession to age and the deep blanket of heavy snow that dropped on us a week ago. I followed the course of least resistance, trying at least to avoid the 5-foot drifts.
Somewhere along the way I muttered, as many Long Islanders have muttered this season, "I am so done with winter."
A few days later, my granddaughter walked that same path out back. She just turned 4 years old, and I saw the excitement on her face as she made her way through what must have seemed like a winding white canyon.
Her joy was the mantra that morning. It was there in the pleasure she took in knocking off the snow that was weighing down the bushes, and her glee in reaching the peak of the 6-foot pile at the end of the driveway. It was there in her anticipation at the top of the slide just before she plunged into mounds of fluff, and her delight in discovering that when you throw a wet snowball against a wall some of the snowball sticks on the wall. It was there in her realization that when you roll a snowball along the snow it gets bigger, and her pride in finishing a pretty darn good-looking snowman.
It was wonderful, and a welcome reminder of the importance of perspective.
Experiencing the world as others experience it is a vital quality. It's an essential part of being fully human. Perspective is where empathy starts, with our ability to see the world as others do. We can't control most of what happens to us and around us, but we can control how we view it. That's perspective.
Famed computer scientist Alan Kay once famously remarked that perspective is worth 80 IQ points. I'm not sure that can be mathematically verified, but I'd say it's worth considerably more than that.
The blizzard reminded me that my granddaughter's generation never had a winter like this one. They never knew what it was like to have snow that deep or snow on the ground for weeks at a time. I am fortunate to have my touchstones — memories of jumping off jungle gyms into lush pillows of snow, of being unable to open the front door after one storm sculpted drifts that reached the first-floor windows, of winter camping trips to the lodge at a Boy Scout camp in northern Connecticut where the snow always seemed to be waist deep and the adventures endless.
My granddaughter had none of that before this winter. Now she does. It's a new perspective for her.
Clashing perspectives abounded in the aftermath of the storm. Where officials saw side streets cleared enough for cars to get out to main roads, residents saw mounds on corners that made turns nearly impossible for school buses, no safe places for kids to wait for buses, and perils for walkers who had to climb small mountains and brave the shoulders of busy roads to make it to school. One hopes that perspective is incorporated in the next big storm response.
I find myself reconsidering my perspective, too. My granddaughter, after all, was not the only one who enjoyed the winding path, the rolling of the snowballs, the making of the snowman, and the 6-foot pile at the end of the driveway. Joy is contagious, and I did catch it from her. I can do without the subzero windchills, but now I'm thinking that the snow is not so bad. It gave my generation a wealth of wonderful memories. Today's little folks deserve the same.
Perspective can be sobering, and exhilarating. It depends on your perspective.
Columnist Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
Michael Dobie is a retired member of the Newsday editorial board.
