Perspective
The mountain is,
The interminable climb,
Tired muscles, painful breaths,
To get to the top.
Or,
It’s the awesome view,
The soul renewing outlook,
That was waiting to be reached.
Most mornings my wife and I go for a walk. We are fortunate enough to live near the edge of the Toowoomba range so we are given a beautiful context in which to do this. I wrote this poem after seeing a particularly glorious sunrise during this walk.
While we walk we talk. Mostly we talk about people – Our kids, our wider family and our friends are the usual topics. Each day the conversation starts again. Most of the time our talk is a celebration of the good things in our life. Sometimes disappointments come up but they usually don’t take too much of our time.
We try to take a long walk. The minimum time we like is an hour. The gift of this amount of time is that we tend to run out of words. This isn’t the silence because of conflict but the sound of two people being content just to be with each other.
What I find is the walk gives me perspective on the day ahead. Work is about people, relationships, hopes and ideas. It’s also about the things that have to be done. Sometimes work can be the climb, the tiredness and the pain. Or, sometimes there is the opportunity to take a rest and appreciate the view.
Two questions I have been asking myself lately are:
- Is there time to walk?
- What is my perspective of the mountain?