Look at the photo above–what do you see? A guy leaning up against a tree, staring out over a reflective lake. Right? There are some fallen trees in the background and the foreground, like you’d see after a storm rolled through. By the lack of leaves, you can see it is most likely winter. Which is odd because the guy is wearing shorts. But yeah, that’s it.
Now look at this:
This is the actual photo. Now the incredible part becomes clear: This one massive tree has fallen and ripped up the ground with its roots. The guy is on his back. There is no lake at all.
Perspective changes everything. We can be absolutely sure we know what’s what–up is up, down is down. But then we tilt our head, and we see differently.
This is also how Mysterious Ways are often revealed to us. Construction work lights transformed into a beacon of hope for the man who would later become our editor-in-chief. A broken hobbyhorse on a couple’s front lawn, eyesore of the neighborhood, became something valuable when the right stranger passed by. Only after zooming in on a wedding photo did one family learn about the mystery guest who had crashed their reception. And a ripped scrap of a magazine turned out to be just the thing one man required to prepare him for a risky surgery. At first glance, none of these objects stood out as extraordinary–but once they garnered a closer look, that’s exactly what they became.
As writer and thinker Thomas Moore tells us in this month’s issue of Mysterious Ways magazine, finding our path through life can be as easy as changing our perspective: “Seek unusual angles, various distances, look for forms rather than things, find images that move you, that awaken your inner voice.”
Try tilting your head once in a while. Taking in the world from a slightly different view. Looking closer. Let us know what wonderful things you discover.
Photo credits: Imgur
