Perspective Shifting

Sometimes in life you really wish you had a camera on your forehead and could capture the glorious creation that surrounds you as you explore. I often bring my camera places and don't take a single picture, because I am too busy enjoying God's creation. I then think back and wish I had captured the memories, but then often am thankful for my trigger-happy friends! It's funny that when two people have cameras at an event, there can be very different pictures taken, with only a few overlapping to show that they were taken at the same event. Different perspectives of the same event produce completely different images and experiences. I personally love taking landscape photos. It's not that I don't like people, but there is something so awesome about capturing the beauty that is in my surroundings rather than the people around me. So when I come back with a camera full of images, there are likely to be 98 of the grass and 2 of my friends and I. Someone else may have 98 of the people that were present, and only 2 to show the place we were.

I wished that I had this camera on my forehead as I was riding my bike last week. All of the sudden I looked up to see the sun setting over a farmers field. I had been so focussed on biking and getting home that I hadn't noticed the absolute beauty I was cycling through. I was on a lonely, quiet, country road with not a single car and all I could see was the sun setting over this field. Every small sound of  my bike wheels turning seemed louder in that moment, because it was everything I could hear. This was a beautiful moment and one I do not want to take for granted. Number one, the sun hardly ever presents itself in Langley, and secondly I was able to be on a quiet country road with mountains all around me as the sun set. It was a picturesque moment.

Moments later in my bike ride I wished I had that same camera in my eyeballs. This time though, was for a less picturesque moment. It was one of those moments when you are looking around and being aware of your surroundings. I had just learned to look around moments before this as I saw this beautiful view. Now as I looked around, however, the view was not so spectacular. I realized why I would bike looking directly in front of me. It is like running: if you look directly at your feet you don't notice you are going uphill. Well, alright, this lasts maybe 10 seconds before my body tells me I'm an idiot for thinking this "trick" would work. But still, I think it mentally helps to not look at the hill in front of you. This time I am looking around and take a good look in front of me. I know where I need to go and can clearly see that for me to get to that spot I need to go up what looks like the equivalent of a ski hill. At first I thought that the lights I could see way in the distance and at the top must be streetlights, and therefore were much higher than I needed to go. Moments later I realized that streetlights don't move and come down the hill like the car lights I was seeing do. At that moment I wanted to laugh at what that hill looked like, and wished I could share this experience with someone else. But nope, no camera in my eyeballs....or at least not one that I can share with other people!

As I rode up this hill I thought about the difference between now and when I first started riding my bike everywhere. I probably would have been dying a couple months ago riding up this same long, treacherous hill, but instead I was enjoying it. I find enjoyment in the small moments of pushing your body physically and achieving something, and these moments are plenty with the multitude of hills around. I also noticed that the hill just flew by and this 16km-primarily-all-uphill bike ride that I had kind of been dreading was over before I knew it. Somehow I had gotten through that bike ride without even noticing it, which came as quite a surprise.

This same shift in perspective I was talking about with photographing an event all of the sudden appeared in my bike riding. Something that before was daunting is all of the sudden a challenge and enjoyable, which makes the whole experience that much greater. I was able to have my dad here for the past few days for graduation and he provided me with some wise words. As we were driving home and I was explaining to him that this is where I bike home, the old man's (he loves it when I call him this) response was great. Kind of annoying, but great. He said that professional cyclists would die to live in a place like this. They probably have to go hundreds of kilometres to find a hill that is as lengthy as that. They would have to do many laps of a much more pathetic, smaller hill to compare to what is here. Therefore I should count it as a blessing. See what I mean? Kind of annoying, but very wise! I had never thought of it quite like that, but in my defence I am no where near to a professional cyclist and this is probably why I find it much harder to view monstrous hills as such a blessing. Life is so much more enjoyable when I am able to look at obstacles as a challenge that I can conquer rather than grumbling. I pray that God would give me the eyes to view not only bike riding, but life in this way always!