Perspective in Writing

There are instances of raw perspective in each person’s life. A friend dies. A family member goes ill. A natural disaster destroys a home. And for a time (an hour? day? year?), everything seems to come sharply into focus. What matters is that person you love. What matters is your own mortality, and everything you’ve yet to accomplish. What does not matter is the hundred other small things that usually matter—a prejudice, a pair of boots you want to buy, a misspoke phrase that a friend may have taken the wrong way. Who cares? you say. There is so much more to life that is so much more important.

I sometimes wonder how it would effect my writing if I could hold onto those moods after a disaster has passed. Perhaps I would delve into an unproductive melancholy. Perhaps I would be opened to a brand new world of possibility …