Perspective

I love experential knowledge.

Learning something through an experience is an experience in itself, often because we didn't expect to learn anything as the events started to unfold. Sometimes, this learning, at an even more basic is really the just the identification of something we didn't know was there before.

The thing about experience is that it takes your preconcieved notions about anything and changes the angle by which you view it. Sometimes that means just being closer to that object or notion. I think that often we think of a change of perspective as a matter of degrees but I have found that the world, your thoughts, your biases shift significantly when you get closer to something. The details of an ideal become more visible, as if you placed an HD lens over your perspective. You notice that it's not glossy, but rough and textured. Even more importantly, you realize that it's not as solid as you once thought in your former persective, but something that can be prodded, poked, and probed.. even molded; like slightly moist clay that you need to exert significant pressure to alter. You take a moment to reassess your surroundings, gauge your reaction, then reconcile them to previous thoughts and assumptions, then move on a slightly different person.

I have many ideals that have changed the closer that I moved to them. One moment you are at a seemingly significant distance from a lifestyle (group of actions, behaviors, thoughts, value system, consequences, etc), then a conversation throws you into the center of it. Now you are experiencing it from the inside looking out. Whereas you were previously looking at it from the outside at what you thought was an solid, opaque shell; you are realizing that your assumption was wrong: it's a permeable membrane that where you can move freely.

As I get further along in my college career, I also get closer to the "real world." My chosen profession is 'change agent', the world calls it entrepreneurship. I want my job to be invovled in start-ups. To many, this lends a sense of arrogance. I know because I felt the same way last year, when I was on the outside, looking at what were my (erroneous) assumptions about the entrepreneurship lifestyle. But I have been allowed to continue getting closer, and it's not some sugar-coated shell of wealth and adventure. Sure there's adventure, but there's massive sacrifice. I have learned about personal burn rate. That there is no trade-off, no tit-for-tat on focussing on one area of your life at the expense of another. In order to do this you have to change your perspective. Because of my passion for making awesome ideas a reality, I can align my personal life (what's that?) with my "work life".

To drive the point further, I am realizing that being an entrepreneur is an "all the time thing, not a some of the time thing". For those of us who played sports and excelled at them, we know that phrase is often Vince Lombardi's mantra on winning. Excellence, a critical component of anything that amounts to anything you do in life (should you so chose), is a state of being not something you turn on and off at will. So I have found a way to make my passion be the solvent and dropped the things in my life I thought I could compartmentalize to be dissolved into a whole new solution, spinning in the beaker of my life.

For years, up until a few weeks ago, I had no idea that I would have learned the things I just described, mainly because I didn't know they existed -that they were constant elements you had to accept as you walked through that membrane. Does it sound harsh? Well it depends on your perspective... The same company looks very different if you are viewing it through a corporate or entrepreneurial lens. Even more so depending where that particular lens is positioned.

But then again so is life. I once read that you actually train yourself to be a fatalist or opportunist. Even more interesting is that you can, through training, change. Your perspective, the lens in which you view anything, can be changed. Sometimes you move it under you own choice (intentional or not), sometimes life moves it for you. Or give you another one.

My challenge is this: take anything, anything, in your life that you feel absolutely certain on and change your perspective of it. Move the lens, adjust the focus, or get a new one altogether. See how things change and take notice of how you change in reaction to the new information. Then do it again. And keep doing it and see if you can alternate between all of these perspectives quickly and accurately. Then move on to something else, then let me know your reaction.