I serve on the board of the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA). It’s an industry group that addresses international government policies that relate to television and radio broadcasters. The board meetings are often in NYC at the headquarters of NBC at ’30 Rock’. I’ve been there many times before for similar efforts. When I travel between DC and NYC the train is my preferred way to go. It’s just as fast as going through airports, and it gets me closer to where I’m going in Manhattan. It’s also much cheaper. Since the train offers Wi-Fi, I can be productive as well. On one of those trips last year I decided not to concentrate so much on work and took some time for pondering. What follows is not new, nor profound, but is a sketch of where my thoughts led that day.
Many years ago, I saw an amusing note on a gas-station bathroom wall in Wyoming. It said something like, “The bottoms of our septic tanks are higher than the top of the tallest building in Denver.” Having lived in Leadville, CO in years past, I could appreciate the sentiment. My mind then recalled when our children were young, and we visited Mount Rushmore. Up close it is very impressive. As we left the site, we stopped at a roadside lookout a few miles away. From that distance the carvings seemed quite small in comparison with all the mountains and largess of the surrounding nature-scenes as a whole. In essence, on the train to NYC my thoughts revolved around perspective.
Immediate demands for one’s attention are at times necessary, such as earning a living. When those demands are less necessary they seem fleeting, such as checking on the number of ‘likes’ on a recent post. What about long-term focus? These attention-demanders can help us grow. The risk is they can become too worldly. Examples include exercise for better health or financial management for stability later in life. Not bad. Maybe even important. Yet, again, do we think long-term about worldly issues only?
What about an eternal focus? Does it cause us to ‘forget’ the things of this life? I would argue that eternal perspective makes our insights on the other two foci (immediate and long-term) more truthful. If we manage to have an eternal perspective, at least occasionally, our immediate demands might also include daily spiritual efforts like living the commandments, reading scriptures, and praying. You know, the ‘primary answers’. In terms of making our long-term investment of time more truthful, an eternal perspective might entice us to consider more effort with family history, attending the temple, fulfilling and magnifying our church callings, or finding ways to offer service. In my train-thoughts I was equating eternal perspective with the idea of being 'in the world but not of the world'.
I think maybe the immediate and long-term life demands are about the ‘what’, while having eternal perspective might be more about the ‘why’. Both the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ can be summed up in the two great commandments to love God and our neighbor.
My first introduction to the idea of perspective that I can actually remember came from a song and cartoon on Sesame Street. It was called “That’s About the Size”. The song is all about our physical perspective in relation to physical objects. It can equally apply to our philosophical perspective in relation to ideological subjects.
Here is the link to the Sesame Street song from all those years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ABxl46Ovv8
Many years ago, I saw an amusing note on a gas-station bathroom wall in Wyoming. It said something like, “The bottoms of our septic tanks are higher than the top of the tallest building in Denver.” Having lived in Leadville, CO in years past, I could appreciate the sentiment. My mind then recalled when our children were young, and we visited Mount Rushmore. Up close it is very impressive. As we left the site, we stopped at a roadside lookout a few miles away. From that distance the carvings seemed quite small in comparison with all the mountains and largess of the surrounding nature-scenes as a whole. In essence, on the train to NYC my thoughts revolved around perspective.
Immediate demands for one’s attention are at times necessary, such as earning a living. When those demands are less necessary they seem fleeting, such as checking on the number of ‘likes’ on a recent post. What about long-term focus? These attention-demanders can help us grow. The risk is they can become too worldly. Examples include exercise for better health or financial management for stability later in life. Not bad. Maybe even important. Yet, again, do we think long-term about worldly issues only?
What about an eternal focus? Does it cause us to ‘forget’ the things of this life? I would argue that eternal perspective makes our insights on the other two foci (immediate and long-term) more truthful. If we manage to have an eternal perspective, at least occasionally, our immediate demands might also include daily spiritual efforts like living the commandments, reading scriptures, and praying. You know, the ‘primary answers’. In terms of making our long-term investment of time more truthful, an eternal perspective might entice us to consider more effort with family history, attending the temple, fulfilling and magnifying our church callings, or finding ways to offer service. In my train-thoughts I was equating eternal perspective with the idea of being 'in the world but not of the world'.
I think maybe the immediate and long-term life demands are about the ‘what’, while having eternal perspective might be more about the ‘why’. Both the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ can be summed up in the two great commandments to love God and our neighbor.
My first introduction to the idea of perspective that I can actually remember came from a song and cartoon on Sesame Street. It was called “That’s About the Size”. The song is all about our physical perspective in relation to physical objects. It can equally apply to our philosophical perspective in relation to ideological subjects.
Here is the link to the Sesame Street song from all those years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ABxl46Ovv8
RSS Feed