Sharing the world with people who have a different point of view from mine

As a history adventurer, I need to do more than just travel in time, I need to see the world through other people's viewpoints. I just love doing this, and it's something that's always interested me, from the time when I decided that just seeing things through my own eyes wasn't enough.

It can be a startling, even scary thing to do, but luckily I can always return back home safe and sound to my life in suburban Phoenix with my wiener dogs. And don't get me wrong, I love the life I have, and especially my dogs, but sometimes I just like to drift away. And by "sometimes", I mean every day. My teachers would have called this day-dreaming, and it did start for me in school when I would get so bored that I would try to imagine what life would be like if I were bit by a radioactive spider and swung from building to building, fighting crime!

But please don't worry about me, I can visit places in my imagination and find my way back home safely. It's a skill that I've always been proud of, and whenever day-to-day life starts to wear me down, I call it "snapping myself back into fantasy" - Amazing Fantasy for those who understand the reference.

I understand that many people need to always be around people who think just like they do, maybe even look like they do. It's human nature to gather in like-minded groups and do things like sit in a stadium watching a game, or find other people who like the same things you do so you can agree on everything. And there's a comfort in that, I understand. But to me, it's just way too dull.

In a longish life I've known many people who have been wildly different from me. Some of them have done things that stretch my imagination, like eat seafood, or watch Cricket. And I've tried to see what their world looks like. I can't eat seafood (I can't even take the smell) nor could I imagine myself being able to sit through a Cricket match (or even ten minutes of it), but I can imagine being someone who could. In my imagination I can picture living in a time or place where eating seafood was common, and watching Cricket was just the thing to do. I could earn my Century, and then break for lunch of raw oysters!

As you probably guessed by now, I've always been an avid reader. And I've never placed any restrictions at all on the books I've read. I've always especially liked reading books that people have warned me never to read. Yeah, I've read that. Yes, and that. And that one is on my library list, thank you!

Being intellectually curious has its dangers, and I know to stay out of places like opium dens. I've never been Shanghai'ed, but I always carried a credit card with me in case I woke up in a foreign country. That never happened, and probably never will, but in my imagination I know what to do, the same way that I could wake up in 1918 and realize that I need to get out of any field named after Flanders.

I'm surrounded by people who have different points of view, and I have no interest in arguing with them. I want to transform into them, see the world through their eyes. I may learn a thing or two, and maybe I'll just be glad to be back home, safe and sound!

Image at the top of this post: My grandfather during World War I.