I was never able to carve out time to watch “Lost” when it was in its first run. Thank God for Netflix. This show is a story-lover’s dream. The overall fabric made up of individual paths thrown together by crisis is among the best I’ve ever witnessed. There was an interesting moment about halfway through the second season that reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend.

Hurley brings Sayid a shortwave radio in an attempt to cheer him up. Hurley offers it to him as a possible means of rigging some sort of communication with the outside world that might lead to their rescue. Sayid brushes off the device calling it little more than a “glorified walkie-talkie.” Later on Sayid brings the radio and a rigged antenna to Hurley explaining that he had a change of heart. As he fires it up he explains that the radio does have significance because it’s able to pick up transmissions from a broader bandwidth. The scene ends with the two sitting on the beach, listening to soothing music and looking up at the stars. There was this sense of hope as the show faded out.

A couple of years ago, my friend Mark Richard and I were discussing the need for people to broaden their perspective. He said that we need to “increase the bandwidth” in which we receive information.

Sometimes we get stuck in a self-imposed rut. We get all of our input from a very small circle and miss out on opportunities to learn, to grow, to be challenged because we don’t see any value in anything that doesn’t immediately fit within our learning template. Like Sayid, we make a quick judgment about an organization, a book or a person because of our limited perspective. Maybe we need to rethink what we assume we know and what we allow ourselves to learn from because our experience might be limiting our ability to be objective.

I want to spend the days that God gives me to walk this earth in a continual state of learning and growing. The only way I can do that is to always make sure that I’ve “increased my bandwidth” so that I can hear everything I need to hear. How do I do this? It’s easy, really…

I just need to choose to do so.