By Shanna Hoppie

The Law of Relativity states:

“Your situation is not fundamentally good or bad until you compare it to something else. Until you decide that it is either good or bad.”

Life situations just are. They’re neutral until we give them meaning. We’re the ones who decide whether something—or someone—is “good” or “bad.”

I had a moment the other day that drove this home for me.

I was driving down a quiet country lane, following a semi-truck—the kind that usually hauls a long trailer. This one wasn’t hauling anything that day. As I followed behind, I started to notice the driver was all over the road. Sometimes he was on the right side, then the left, then suddenly swerving back again.

My first thought was: he must be drunk. What else could explain such erratic driving?

I started to get nervous. What if he lost control and rolled? What if he hit oncoming traffic and caused a major accident? Why do people choose to drive under the influence? I imagined all kinds of awful scenarios. What if I didn’t make it home? What would happen to my children if they had to grow up without their mother? How would my husband raise six kids alone?

And then—something shifted.

I looked around more closely and realized something I hadn’t noticed before: the road we were on was lined with thick trees on both sides. I hadn’t paid them much attention—they hadn’t been in my way. But the truck was much taller than my car, with shiny smoke stacks rising high on either side. If the driver had stayed perfectly centered in the lane, he would’ve hit most of those trees.

He wasn’t out of control. He was maneuvering. Intentionally swerving—carefully and precisely—to avoid low-hanging branches. What had looked like recklessness was actually wisdom.

That realization hit me hard.

How often do we go through life making snap judgments—about people, situations, even ourselves—without seeing the full picture? How often do we assume something is “wrong” only to find out, later on, that it was exactly right?

Perspective changes everything.