Perspective Shifts

How exactly do we view things differently?

Trilliumaires not billionaires // Help me with my book research by filling out this survey // Trays for fika // Speaking of fika, my book Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee break turns 10 next month!

Hello friends,

It’s the first day of March, and if you abide by Roz Chast’s calendar, then you’ll be happy to know that we’ve almost made it through two thirds of the year.

I’m sitting with coffee looking out over a foggy Swedish landscape. I’m here for a few weeks on a research trip for my book. As much as writers love to complain about writing, this of course is a significant job perk: to step away from the desk, be in a different place, talk to new people, see what you find.

To be on this side of the pond right now is, well… it’s all kinds of things. But largely it feels incredibly embarrassing. Every conversation has the underlying intensity of the political reality at hand, the uncertainty, the instability, the daily dose of absolute shock. I’ve almost spent more time talking about politics here than I do at home. Certainly, the view from the inside isn’t great, but I assure you that the view from the outside looking in isn’t any better, in fact in many ways, it’s even worse.

I’m always appreciative of this change in perspective, to be able to see things at a distance, to view them through a different lens. Travel, of course, makes that kind of perspective shift easier, but I do think it’s possible even if we never leave home. Although it requires a certain kind of curiosity, a certain kind of attention.

Perspective shift is a much-covered topic of creativity and innovation. “Change your perspective!” sounds incredibly trite, but to get to a new idea, a new way of being, we have to be able to connect unexpected dots. We have to be able to see what is in front of us with new eyes. That’s not always easy (understatement of the day).

A few weeks ago I was eating dinner with someone who works in tech. He was asking me about my book project, and in a very kind and well-meaning way, suggested that if I ever got stuck and needed new ideas, I could feed my notes into AI and ask it to come up with some new connections.

My friends, the horror. I don’t know what the look on my face was, but let’s just say that I don’t think it would have won me a poker game.

I’ve thought about this a lot since then, wondered if I am resistant to this kind of technology simply out of principle. Is it naïve to think that I can avoid these platforms? Most of us probably use AI in some way. I know I use plenty of it for transcription, for example. Thinking back to the days when I would re-listen to interviews and pause them every three seconds in order to type them out, I’m thankful there’s technology to assist in the process.

But helping me to connect ideas?

That feels like taking all the good stuff out of the creative process.

What is better than when you’ve been struggling with a creative conundrum for weeks and you go on a walk or have a conversation and then finally something clicks? That tiny moment where everything falls in line, and you feel like you’re able to grasp something incredibly elusive, pull something concrete from the fog of ideas?

That’s the dopamine hit we’re all after. That’s what keeps us all coming back for more. I refuse to give that up.

As a word, “perspective”¹ is all about looking and seeing, rooted in the Latin word perspicere, to “inspect, look through, look closely at.” It is to turn the object of inquiry on all sides, to figure out a way to move around it, see it from above and below. That takes time of course. Something most of us probably would say we’re very short on.

Yet perspective feels like one of those things that deserves our time, deserves to be developed. A lifelong process of gathering input and allowing it to change how we see the world, how we make connections.

I can always feel my own perspective shifting as the season begins to change. In this past week, I’ve seen witch hazel and snowdrops, the promise of more growth and life to come. The view from this vantage point feels different than even a few weeks ago, when I was trudging along a city street in a snowstorm.

Spring equinox is later this month, and even though it’s a few weeks away, there are already inklings of a new season, both in the natural world and the internal one. There’s a bit of energy percolating, the cold edges of winter are giving way to possibility. There’s a desire to clean out and take stock, to get clarity on what’s ahead. There’s a sense of needing to discard the excess, to step forward unencumbered.

Every time I’m in Sweden, I’m conscious of how being here alters my view of things, encourages me ask more questions of myself. It’s not the kind of newness that forces me to marvel at every basic thing, like going to an unknown city or country might do. It’s well-known enough to feel intimate, a comfortable landing place with language, customs, homes, and ways of being that I can fit myself into. But it’s different enough from my everyday to cause me to use different brain wiring.

That might be simply from using a different language for a bit—it always feels like jumping into a neural network that’s already established, but needs a little use to start firing again.

The perspective shift then isn’t so much something fresh, but more of a return. A realignment of self. It’s a reminder to view things through my other set of eyes that have been well trained over the decades, but aren’t my everyday way of seeing. As if I’ve been carrying a set of binoculars in my bag for months, but had forgotten to take them out and use them.

Now that that they’re out, I’m going to work at not putting them back.

To be able to see things from a distance, to be able to find the unexpected connections.

-Anna

• Jacqueline Suskin
  ’s poem store, where you can order a custom poem.

• “Create a space for projects with lower ambitions, to focus on simple executions of simple ideas,” as

  Alex Morris
  says.

• Speaking of perspective change: turns out that grains of sand up close are very beautiful.

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1. it’s perspektiv in Swedish, and graphically, I like the look of this spelling much better