Perspective

Gaining perspective is a lifelong endeavor. I probably only see life in two-dimensions right now, compared to the view enjoyed by my elders. But occasionally my perspective is expanded by an experience, a book, a piece of music, an article, or a keen insight. Recently, my 2D world has taken on a variety of new shades and hues, pushing towards the reality of three dimensions. I don’t know if I’m quite there yet, but I have progressed.

England obviously opened my eyes to the concept of living with less and to being more environmentally conscious. I always knew there were other, equally good, or perhaps better, ways of living than the American way I had known since childhood, but I never imagined I would adopt any of those foreign principles. But they made sense – what could I do but accept them? I imagine that these amendments to my way of life will slowly accumulate with time.

Experience aside, a few books have profoundly impacted the way I view the world. A long series of books, articles, and discussions over the years have completely transformed how I view the relationship between God and science, particularly regarding creation and evolution, both of which I believe occurred, which obviously requires that I interpret the book of Genesis figuratively. Why it is so difficult for many to even consider the possibility that Genesis is figurative, I know not.

But that could easily, and probably will, fill a later blog. Right now, I want to discuss a few other books that have revealed the foreign world to me in a powerful way. Most recently, I finished reading The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini, just a few weeks ago. Further back, I read Balkan Ghosts, by Robert Kaplan, and portions of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, by Rebecca West. All of these books helped me to see, for the first time, the alternate reality of places that I only knew as war zones. One book is fiction, the others are non-fiction, but they all revealed the humanity of war torn regions.

Balkan Ghosts and Black Lamb and Grey Falcon are both about the Balkans. Many people don’t even really know where the Balkans are. I could probably have only named one country from the region before I read Balkan Ghosts, and I probably would have labeled several other countries as “Balkan” which really are not. When Bosnia and Serbia and all those names came up, I immediately thought of Milosevic, and that was all I could think of. Murder, rape, genocide. And while war and strife has certainly been long-lasting in the Balkans, so have love, friendship, loyalty, hope, joy, and daily life. Some critics of Kaplan say his book is too defeatist, implying that peace is never possible in the region because of the deep-seated ethnic hatred, and while that may be a good critique, the book nonetheless opened my eyes to the beauty and mystery of the region.

Investigating further, I read portions of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, the definitive travel book about the region, and perhaps the first true travelogue. Written in the late 1930s, this book more completely brought to light the Balkans known by those who lived there. There was certainly much grief and frustration, but there was also much pride and love. Most Americans do not travel to places like Bosnia or Serbia because they seem dangerous, and they are, to some extent. But they are probably more dangerous because we flaunt our wealth in the face of their relative poverty; we are easy targets. In Oxford I had the pleasure of meeting several students from the Balkans and many others who had traveled through the region. They all agreed: it was one of the most charming, beautiful, and fascinating places they had ever visited.

When I read The Kite Runner recently, this same idea was again intensely present. The Afghanistan portrayed prior to the Russian invasion and then later under Taliban rule was deeply moving and a complete surprise. I knew that the Taliban were ruthless and that the country was impoverished, but I had no idea that the country had ever been anything but that, even for a small group of people. The narrator, who grew up in a privileged neighborhood, was certainly not the normal Afghan, but the portrayal of the freedom there, most notably of religion, and the relative liberalism compared to the rule of the Soviets and Taliban, were utterly strange to me. I had to completely rethink the image I had of Afghanistan. No longer was it simply the impoverished, religiously intolerant, backward country of the Taliban; now it was a country once headed on a good path which met a disastrous fate at the hands of the Soviets and the conniving Taliban. How sad to think of where it was before the invasion and to where it has fallen now! It is a great tragedy; a tragedy which I previously blamed on the Afghans themselves. No people is completely innocent of its country’s descent into violence, but the Afghans have been abused and exploited. Most of them have only suffered while small groups of power-hungry villains lay waste to the country.

It is clear to me that many of my views of the world have egregiously lacked perspective. The more I learn, the more I discover my own error. Especially when it comes to understanding the foreign world, I no longer trust my preconceptions. I used to list both Afghanistan and the Balkans as places I had no desire to visit, ever. Now, they are both on the list.