Ponderings…Perspective

Last week, my sister and my niece came to visit me from their home in Washington State. My sister lives a very busy and productive life, much like I do, and time had gotten away from us a bit. Indeed, it had been four long years since our last visit, and we were determined to spend our long-overdue week together having as much fun and spending as much time together as possible.
You see, I adore my big sister. Always have. Although we have many years of lost time between us, each time we meet it is as if not a day has gone by. We fall right into step together, and all of a sudden, I am that 13 year old girl again, if not a little wiser than before (and full of a great deal more grey hairs and aching joints at 30 than I had as a teen!). It is easy to forget that four years has elapsed since I have last laid eyes on her. She looks very much the same as she always has. No, the real shock was in my beloved niece, Willow. The last time I saw her, she was a little thing, just nine years old. When I saw her again, she was nearly as tall as I was, exuding the beginning rays of adolescent beauty. As I studied her features, wanting to memorize her in the short time that we had, preserve her perhaps, those four years stared back at me, impossible to ignore.
As the week came to an end, and my sister and I said our tearful farewell, we made promises to plan our next visit far sooner than four years from now. I jokingly said through my sobs, “We will find a way to work in more trips! At this rate, if we only visit every four years, we only have like 10 visits left!” This absurdity was met with more sobbing, hugging and chuckles as we both promised we would find time, somehow.
In the empty silence that followed her departure, a piece of our promise lingered, hanging in the air like smoke on a windless day, and no less suffocating. Ten visits left. I'll get to see my sister, whom I love more than I can say, just 10 more times.
Naturally, I did the math, just to see if my weepy estimation was accurate and I was, naturally, a bit off in the numbers. If I live as long as the average lifespan, which is around 80 years old, I have around 50 years left to live. Divide 50 by four, you get 12.5, the number of visits that I will have left with my sister if I succumb to my own complacency.
This hit home. This rhetorical and rather immaterial math equation put everything alarmingly in perspective. I am not foolish enough to think that this equation holds any sort of factual weight, it was merely an exercise in context. Even so, suddenly, a small portion of me feels suddenly as if I am already out of time. Perspective is defined as the particular attitude toward, or way of regarding something. It is a point of view. And this inconsequential estimation of my life put things into a very new point of view for me.
A new perspective can be intimidating. It can give us a fresh understanding of a situation that we hadn't considered before. It can also pave the way for learning as we go, and allow us to make changes as we see the need for them. I have every intention of seeing my sister more than 12 (and a half) times before I die. Which means I need to either plan around my busy life or opt to live longer than the average person. With this new perspective, I see no reason I couldn't attempt to do both.
We live our lives with such concern for the moment. This breeds a sort of near-sightedness as those moments flicker past, like sparks in the wind. We allow life to consume us, as we hold attention for the fleeting things that feel in the moment to be oh, so important. We lose the bigger picture, often until it is too late. It's important to look up from those flickering moments, and to gain a new perspective, that we may change our direction and avoid the later heartaches of regret.