By: Emma MacFarlane
A stranger approached me at a music festival as I stood in the heart of a massive tent that housed approximately two thousand people. “Check this out,” he said. “If you pay attention you can tell when people have left the back of the tent, because the air gets a tiny bit cooler.” He claimed that he had noticed how the influx and efflux of people into the tent changed the temperature of the air within. I was skeptical about his ability to actually notice the change in temperature, but I was simultaneously intrigued, because the thought had never occurred to me in the first place. I hadn’t considered looking at the tent that way, as almost a biological entity in itself, as an ecosystem that the crowd naturally altered.
His simple statement was something that I mulled over in the days to come. How did somebody come to have a perspective like that? I had been so fixated on the music and staring at the shoulders of the people in front of me that I hadn’t considered an aerial view, a larger effect. I wondered what it takes to step outside oneself and see the bigger picture. I wondered what it would look like if I tried looking at my own life a little bit differently.
Take this: you do poorly on a midterm. In the moment, it seems devastating. You studied so hard- it just doesn’t seem logical that your mark doesn’t echo that. Take this: your dream job calls you back and says “sorry, not this time around”. In the moment, it seems devastating. You prepared so thoroughly for your interview, and you know deep down you’d be a great candidate. We all face moments like this, and in the moment, these setbacks present themselves as enormous mountains that loom over us, that look impossible to climb. But try looking at it from a new point of view. From above, you don’t notice a mountain’s depth.
It’s important to take a step back sometimes and to look at the challenges in your own life from a novel perspective. Instead of seeing each event as a life-altering success or an enormous failure, think of each event as one person: together, they flow in and out of your life, changing the temperature of your course. Thinking of things this way helps me manage my own successes and setbacks, working steadily towards my goals and taking even my small accomplishments in stride while recognizing that no matter what, everything I have been through is a little part of what I have shaped into myself.
Successes and failures both happen, but everything balances out and creates who you are, and that is something that is truly amazing. Look at all the successes that fill your tent: they should be a great source of pride and inner warmth. There’s only one thing left for you to remember to do: go enjoy the music.
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