Ways of Looking - The Lenses
Over time, certain perspectives tend to show up again and again in the reflections, questions, and stories on this site.
They aren’t rules.
They aren’t beliefs you need to adopt.
They’re simply recurring ways of noticing - patterns that seem to help people think more clearly about change, influence, and what lasts.
Some visitors never feel the need to name them. Others find that naming them makes the ideas easier to recognize and use. This page is for the latter.
If you prefer to work only with the reflections and questions themselves, you won’t miss anything essential by skipping over this section and jumping straight to "Using the Lenses" below.
Why These Ways of Looking Exist
Contours of Tomorrow began with a simple observation: small acts of attention - care, effort, memory, restraint - often shape what comes next more than we expect.
As these ideas were explored, five perspectives kept reappearing. Not because they were chosen in advance, but because they proved useful across many situations.
Together, they offer a loose framework for thinking about how we move through time, how our actions ripple outward, and how meaning can persist beyond a single moment.
You can think of them as lenses, or simply as helpful questions to return to when things feel unclear. Click on any of the lenses to learn more about it.
Explore each here:
Using the Lenses
The spheres above link to deeper explanations of each lens. The path below leads to practical applications — problem solving, relationships, and other ways to apply the lenses in your life. As the collection of tools grows, this page will guide you to new approaches and questions to ask.