Perspective

Perspective is something you get from observing. From looking all around you and reading things and talking to people and hearing what is being said and noting what is being done.

But perspective can change when you go to a different place or look at things through different eyes or hear different views.

That happened more than once on my trip to France, when observing and hearing and noting and talking opened up new ways of doing things and new ways of seeing things or in other words -- a new perspective.

Just one example:

My fellow students taking morning French classes were from Poland, Russia, Switzerland, Austria, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy and Hungary. Thankfully, most already had a second language down and that was English, so we occasionally reverted to conversation in English when we wanted to communicate faster on more complex subjects.

One friend from Austria asked me why we in America make such a big deal out of personal issues. Tiger Woods' infidelities had just surfaced, and private indisgretions of public officials had recently made big news.

We don't discuss our public officials' private lives, she taught me. There is an unwritten rule among the press that you just don't go there, she said.

Her perspective made me wonder about the perspective I had grown up with and seen and heard and read and felt was normal all my life. It made me wonder if perhaps there might be better ways of doing things than the ways we're so accustomed to we don't even question.

It's good to go someplace besides where you've always been. It's good to see things through others' eyes -- even if they're looking back at you.