I thought more about perspectives since entering yesterday’s blog, and I realised how my perspective is quite different to most people’s. This is mainly because I have travelled to many countries (31) and lived in four – Australia, Germany, England, Canada.
Having not grown up in Canada, I’m not used to -40C weather. I’m not used to 0C weather! Before living here I had seen snow twice – once in Germany and once in England. I had never seen a game of (ice) hockey, didn’t know what the Stanley Cup was, had never heard of Edmonton or the Stampede, and had no idea that there was a difference between Canada’s and the United States’ accents.
But I do know which spiders are poisonous, I know that it’s very important to leave your house with a bottle of water on a hot day, I believe that beaches are a free service and should be no more
than a 20 minute drive from your home, I’m used to celebrating Christmas in hot weather and sweating over presents before having a barbecue and a swim, and I played basketball as an outdoor winter sport.
Yes, life is different when you live on the other side of the planet, but Australia and Canada are two of the more similar countries I’ve been to. In Thailand a toilet bowl is a luxury and you haggle over the price of a can of Coke; in Spain the shops don’t open until late morning, but they stay open until midnight; in England the beer is served warm and in New Zealand people walk around bare foot in public.
I get told that my Australian accent is a chick-magnet in Canada, but from my point of view it’s annoying because I answer the same five questions every time I meet someone new (Are you Australian? I have a friend in Australia, do you know him? How long have you been here? You get the drill!)
Travelling and experiencing the world and its many cultures has been one of the most eye-opening aspects to my life. I am lucky that travel was encouraged by my parents, and that is a gift I will impart to my children. Just like camping makes you appreciate your warm bed, sometimes it takes seeing another world to appreciate your own.
It’s because of my different perspective that I won’t pay a thousand dollars to go to an all inclusive resort and sit on a beach for a week – that should be free. It’s because of my different perspective that I get excited by snow and think of skating as a challenge. It’s because of my different perspective that I think that the game of cricket which takes thirty hours, spread over five days is exciting even when it ends in a draw!
As citizens of the world it’s important that we recognise and respect the people around us, knowing that they all didn’t have the same upbringing as we did, and have vastly different views and opinions of the world. It’s not the era for being insulated. This is the age of understanding and acceptance. Today’s enemy may be tomorrow’s brother.
