The length of time that it takes us to get one small piece of one simple life lesson is what allows us the appreciation, the gratitude to assimilate that piece.
Time is the lens, and as time lengthens, the lens widens. When we reach that pivotal moment, the moment at which the lesson becomes clear, a shift happens and the new perspective is given meaning and depth through that passage of time, through that wide angled lens which led up to this moment. Sometimes it’s the simplest things that create the most profound shifts.
A friend of mine recently told me a story about some rewarding results from her meditation practices. She had been noticing how irritable she would get when folding the laundry. It felt like it always took forever and she would get very impatient. After she’d been meditating regular for a few weeks, she decided to see if it really was taking forever to fold her smalls, and so, putting a bagel into the toaster, she vowed that when the toaster went off she would stop folding the clothes, having the proof she needed. She began the task of folding her clothes and was amazed to find that she had completed the task and emptied the basket before the toaster was done! “Oh, I’ve got this all wrong. This didn’t take any time at all.”
Shifts in perception are the biggest and best moments of growth. This is because we cannot change anything else, we can only change our viewpoint. Therefore, a shift in the way we view the world is indeed, everything.
In fact, Marianne Williamson talks about this in ‘Return To Love’. She describes a miracle as a shift in perception.