Dear LPG,

I just wanted to say something about perspective. 

When I was at school I was quite good at art, perhaps that is because I could not spell and when I got past simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, maths got much too complicated for me too but, like most students, I survived.

As a young artist I always found that one of the most important aspects of drawing surrounded putting the objects you are planning to draw into perspective. 

It took me ages to work out that applying that principle to real life is also as valuable, and I know that LPG has posted other readers’ thoughts on the subject, but I just wanted to bring it back to the top of the list for another day.

We older people can get very caught up in our own relatively negative perspective of life.  Pain, loneliness and boredom tend to become places that we can get to more easily than people of other ages; sometimes we have no choice in how the circumstances that force us to get a little depressed come about.

Now, as we get nearer to midwinter,  and there is less daylight and more night-dark to deal with, I find myself at home longer and with more time on my hands to realise just how things often appear to have changed for the worst. 

But just like artists can improve the perspective of their pictures every one of us has the power to go some way towards changing the way we perceive our lives for the better.  Even if it is cold, get out and about and talk to others, make friends, don’t shun the day centre or lunch club down the road (they are always looking for new members).   Doing this now, while it is still not too slippery and dangerous outside, may help you find someone new to talk to on the telephone when the weather gets too severe to allow you even this pleasure. 

There is nothing like a chat with someone, who you perceive as going through an experience that is worse than yours, to put your perspective of life in a better light, while your chat with them can make a difference to theirs. 

JE, Brockley