Perspective

It was blue. It was sparkling blue and idyllically pretty when I sat transfixed, watching it, from my wooden bench beside the water’s edge. I saw the sun reflecting in the shallow waters as they trickled slowly across the yellow beach down to the shining blue expanse of the estuary. I saw it and it was blue like the sea, as it glittered between the brown rocks and the fronds of seaweed and reflected a perfect blue summer’s sky.

I watched the children, playing by the water, perching on the smooth, flat, grey slate that formed a bridge where the water emerged from the hill and out onto the sand. They tramped about in the stream, their sandals wet and muddy, and gathered round the slate bridge for a moment’s rendezvous to decide what to do next.

I got up. I wandered aimlessly along the grassy bank and peered more closely at the stream bed. To my amazement, the blue vanished. Green mossy pebbles mingled with bronzed iron-tinged rocks. Rivulets of gold glistened between the rocks and over the muddy surface beneath. The scene had changed and with it the mood, from summer to autumn, from brisk, bubbling joy to calm serenity. Gone were the dancing, sparkling lights, gleaming on the bluest of blue water. Instead, as I looked down into the stream, I saw mossy green banks and the golden glow of the bronzed stones beneath the calm, unruffled surface. I marvelled at this instantaneous change – not a real change, but a change in perspective, brought about simply by the change in angle, from sitting to walking, from one direction to another. I began to wonder how much of life and our changing mood is a matter of perspective.