I can see clearly now: the value of first hand experience

Cafe in Puerto Natales, Chile

Wherever we are in the world, we always notice opticians’ shops. From the simple shack in the Indian town to the trendy optical store on the European high street, I see a glimpse of my own past; an environment in which I spent the first ten years of my working life as an optometrist and one that my wife is still very much part of. To anyone else these unremarkable shop fronts would fleetingly register as another optician’s shop and be instantly ignored. Yet because of that personal attachment we’ll probably never walk past such a business without viewing it through the lens of insider knowledge, and wondering what type of business it is, what services they offer and what working in that place is like for the resident optician.

An important revelation? Hardly. But wait a minute. That ability to see something seemingly mundane and observe it in a richer light thanks to our experiences is worth a closer look. What about people? A few years ago I had never met anyone from Egypt, or from Thailand, or Nicaragua or even Bulgaria. Having spent nearly two years in close quarters with fellow students from these and many other countries (in Manchester of all places), I now had a point of reference. If any of these countries now appeared on the news I would instinctively consider my fellow MBA student from that country.

Because we demand an overwhelming diet of bad news, the stories we hear about other places are typically ones of terrorism, civil unrest, corruption or violence. Yet these encounters and experiences provided me with a natural counterbalance: while our news channels might be painting a picture of a place as a violent hellhole I knew that there were people there who had the same values, beliefs and dreams as anyone else. The subconcious appreciation of the richness of a group, whether it be a profession, a nationality or a group of hobbyists, grows enormously when we gain first hand exposure.

What has this got to do with travel, or even opticians? On many occasions before we’ve travelled to a new destination we’ve heard comments such as “they’re all crooks there” or “that place is full of terrorists” or even “everybody’s lovely there”. What exactly are such opinions based on: on a diet of newspaper opinions (often outdated and nearly always wrong)? On a personal encounter? Or a even tall story once heard in a bar? To apply a set of characteristics to any group of people based on a sample of one (and often less than one) is to see a single thread and then attempt to describe a tapestry.

Every time I’ve travelled, or for that matter met others from a particular interest group or from a distant place that I don’t know about, I gain a little extra insight into a world of which I wasn’t previously aware. These groups may have appeared one-dimensional before, yet these exposures offer an opportunity to see the different characters, opinions and motivations that make people do what they do – even become opticians!