This past weekend, my oldest daughter and I went fishing on Lake Michigan. It was our first time to ever catch fish together. She brought in a big King Salmon. It was almost idyllic to watch her struggle with a fish for thirty minutes.
Then it all went south, as the saying goes.
Three young men were floating near us. Just bobbing up and down. No real panic displayed in their actions. Probably engaging in some illegal activity that helped them stay calm. As we turned, they called out to us that they were stranded. Their boat wouldn’t start.
So we pulled up alongside. They had no radio, no satellite, essentially nothing that they were supposed to have in order to be five miles out in the middle of a lake.
We stopped fishing an hour earlier than we wanted to stop. We got home an hour later than we had hoped to get home. All because three guys wanted to go out on a boat, and didn’t take the proper precautions.
There’s a life lesson to be had in this situation. So often, we get so caught up in our own dreams, or our own crap that we forget to think about how it might impact others.
That’s one of the biggest and toughest life lessons we have to understand, right? That what we do here, affects other people. And here’s the real kicker: it often impacts them in ways we can’t understand or anticipate.
This is one of the most common problems for couples caught in a bad narrative in their marriage. They can only see how it’s effecting them. They can only see the problem from their own perspective.
This is the thing that has to change in order for real change to begin. If we are going to change the system that is our relationship, we are going to have to change how we view things.
Taking others point of view into consideration isn’t just polite, it’s necessary for a whole and happy life.
We have to own the fact that our lives are not only impacted by others but that we impact the lives of others. Whether our intentions are to alter their lives or not, we do indeed alter it. Accepting that is key to beginning the long process of change.