A new perspective

The spring brings waves of students back from their semesters abroad with greater understandings, expanded world views, and -- above all -- new perspectives. Any returning student will say that his experience in other parts of the world has opened his eyes in ways living at home never could.

When I returned from Kenya this past summer, my life suddenly looked very different. The time that I spent in the African plains showed me a side of existence I had never seen before: a careful balance between the beauty of nature, and the hardships of the third world. I was blessed -- and burdened -- with an entirely new perspective on the things I thought I knew.

My newfound cognizance did pose a temporary philosophical setback. It took a while before I realized, for instance, that buying a burger for six bucks and not finishing all of it didn't make me evil, just full. But ultimately I felt enlightened. I needed time, though, to reconcile what I had seen with what I was seeing.

When I reentered my life in the States everything seemed to me utterly perverse. I read an article in People magazine that divulged the hair-styling secrets of some of our favorite celebrities. While the Maasai tribesmen near our camp in Kenya were struggling to feed their families maize and beans, actresses over here were spending tens of thousands of dollars on cuts, colors and products to create the perfect coif for the cameras.

In fact, by my calculations, for the price Heather Locklear pays for a haircut every six weeks, she could send one hundred Kenyan children to primary school for a year. Meanwhile, I was scraping shampoo out of old hotel bottles because I couldn't justify to myself buying Herbal Essences for five dollars a pop.

I turned on my friends for taking cabs, on my family for buying a DVD player, and on myself for feeling the need to spend money I didn't think I deserved in the first place. My introspection had turned destructive. What I learned, finally, was that I couldn't compare every aspect of my life to what I had seen in Kenya. I didn't need to forget -- I couldn't forget -- but not taking advantage of the opportunities this country has to offer was just as much an affront as taking them completely for granted.

After three months in a land that barely seemed real and the following three months in a home I didn't recognize, I came away with a much more informed, indeed illuminated, view of the world around me.

My time abroad showed me that exposure to things outside of one's understanding can have an enormous impact on one's outlook. But recently it has dawned on me that the value of perspective does not lay solely in an earth-shattering rearrangement of personal conceptions. Rather, a new point of view can be gained every day, in the simplest things we constantly gloss over.

Consider the winter. Within the last few weeks, temperatures have been far below freezing. At times it was too cold to snow -- something I'd never even thought could happen. There have been days, however, when the weather has been considerably warmer. On such days, almost instantaneously, I and others like me shed our arctic layers in celebration, in defiance. Looking out a classroom window last week I actually saw a man in no more than jeans and a T-shirt. Go figure.

But I knew something was truly off when I heard these words spill from my lips: "It got all the way up to 29 today." 29 degrees Fahrenheit. I was stunned at my own enthusiasm. Born and raised in Manhattan, I'm not exactly accustomed to tundra conditions, and yet the idea that it might hit freezing soon was actually exciting.

Later, I pondered the situation. My roommates and I thought back to last semester. In November, say, 29 degrees would have kept us in the house, huddled under blankets, complaining incessantly about Boston weather patterns. But now it was like a godsend.

What had changed? Simply put, our perspective, a mere month or so of cold had changed our standards of warmth, standards that we had probably set unconsciously as we went along.

And so I wonder: if something as little as a low front or an icy sidewalk can show us that things may not be as they seem, how much is out there to help us understand our world better? All it takes is a little perspective.