Perspective
Perspective matters. I currently live in a small town of
under fifty thousand people, in an agricultural area. Most of the people I encounter
in my community have lived here their whole lives, or as near as makes no difference.
I haven’t lived in a community this small since my childhood, which was in a
natural resource community of under twenty thousand. However, I’ve been gifted
with extensive opportunities to travel, and I’ve lived in major cities on three
continents and in three countries. I’ve travelled to many, many more. I am not
presently in a travel phase in my life – I’m raising small humans and I don’t
presently choose to spend my disposable income on international travel (though
if we’re being honest, I miss it a lot and question that decision sometimes!).
The sustainability implications of international travel are huge though – the greenhouse
gas emissions of the flights, the social and cultural problems that can stem
from the tourism industry, the ecological
impacts of development are just a few aspects of travel that create concern
for me.
Which brings me to my recent adventure to Vancouver. I took off to Vancouver
this last weekend for a girl’s weekend with my sister in law. We drove to Vancouver
– a trip of about five hours, give or take – and stayed downtown. What a
delightful change in perspective. I think I got more out of people-watching
from a side-walk café on Friday night
and walking the seawall on Sunday morning than I did out of anything else we
did (though the window shopping and eating excellent food really didn’t hurt). Travel
on a more local scale is still fun and can offer some of the change of scenery
and perspective that I used to get from international travel, especially if
that local travel can take me somewhere with a large international presence.
Vancouver is a city of immigrants and to hear the myriad languages, see the diversity
of people, dress, food, interactions and transactions was good for my heart. I sometimes
feel like this small valley I live in is the whole world – the mountains and lakes
hem in a whole universe of people who seemingly feel no need to look anywhere else
for satisfaction. But for me, I crave the diversity of the city – the options
for ‘lifestyle’ diversity, yes, but more importantly, the broadening of my
perspective horizon to encompass people and places I don’t know and may never
see.
You see, I don’t see how anyone can care about the planet
and its diversity of people and places if we never encounter it. It’s all too
easy to be insular (and this is not unique to my community!). The long-standing
environmental slogan has been to “Think Global. Act
Local.” There is nothing wrong with this statement, except that I don’t see
how we can think globally if we do not encounter the global, if the local is all-encompassing.
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