Perspective = Time + Saturation

We like to say around Periodic Tables that change happens at the speed of trust, and trust happens at the speed of relationships. But what exactly does this mean?

We are all born into particular ‘contexts,’ or lenses through which we view the world. The frames come from everywhere, often without us noticing them -- the neighborhoods we grow up in, our religious experiences (or lack of), the color of our skins, our lives in rural or city environments, even the media we chose to watch. Our parents, or primary caregivers, had a way of sharing life with us when we were children that influenced our development and perspectives.

Our perspectives on the many issues that affect our communities today didn’t come from thin air. Perspective is the product of time and saturation. One of my favorite lines ever written comes from the Indigo Girls in their song “Ghost.” It says, “Well, the Mississippi’s mighty, but it starts in Minnesota, at a place that you could walk across with five steps down. And I guess that’s how you started, like a pinprick to my heart, but right now you wash right through me, and I start to drown.”

All our deepest relationships are the product of time and saturation. They all boil down to how much time we’ve spent with each other, and how much of that experience we allow to soak through our barriers of trust. Our perspectives of others, even entire groups of people, arise from this process over time.

One of the most concerning things for me as we enter into a new election cycle is the way we have doubled down on our divisions as a nation, even to the point of refusing information that potentially counters the perspectives we have built up over time. The only cure for what ails us, seems to me, is time and saturation. We must consciously choose to make time for perspectives that are different than our own, and in that process maybe take the rain suit off and let what we hear soak into us.

At Oak Ridge Periodic Tables, we are interested in those kinds of conversations. They require a bold honesty, or what we call “Brave Space.” They ask us to put aside our assumptions and be open to looking at a problem or an issue from a different point of view.  And even when no resolution can be found – and let’s face it, there is no resolving some of the mass hysteria arising from false news sources these days – what we can do is learn to understand and accept why a person might feel they way they do about their untruths. To do that, we must stop interrupting long enough to listen, maintain dignity in our responses (which isn’t easy!), and love our way through the messiness of human relationships.

I hope you will seriously consider making the effort in 2024 to saturate the environments in which you live!