I was walking back home with my dog (he still eats the newspapers by the way) this weekend and re-emerging from the woods on the hill that over looks the valley I live in, I stopped, and took the time to stand and stare.

Below me was the village, nestled deep in a cleft. The surrounding hills were lavishly adorned with sprawling woodlands, skirting and dividing the many farm fields in which the wheat was beginning to ripen, the hedgerows subdividing these further. The sky was a cloudless blue and a cooling breeze pleasantly tempered the sun's heat.

It was a view I'd seen many times and I thought back to the very first time I'd gazed upon it; to how beautiful it had looked and how breathtaking. Only by now I had grown accustomed to the scene, seldom stopping to look at it. So I stood, and stared. And tried to see it in the same way that I had seen it before, that first time.

My eyes watered with the effort, but to no avail. So I stood and thought about how I might re-awaken my former appreciation of this vista and then set off in the opposite direction to my normal route home down into the village, walking along the top of a fallow field and down along a seldom trodden path by an overgrown hedge row.

I stopped at that point and looked back along the valley: still the same trees, the same fields of wheat, the same houses, but all different now, all now being viewed from a different viewpoint, from a different perspective. I'd changed the way that I was looking at things. The leafy green woods toppled down the emerald green hills and the golden wheat rippled in the breeze, the thick, luxurious hedgerows overflowed with bird song and the gossamer wings of the multitude of bees and multi-coloured butterflies delicately caressing the air.

I wandered home and reflected on how in life we can grow accustomed to things; to our surroundings, to our relationships, to our work and leisure time. Sometimes becoming trapped in a viewpoint that prevents us from being open to new ideas or unable to escape long held convictions about others and even about ourselves.

So today, I'd like to invite you to go looking for that different viewpoint, that new perspective, and see if you can see things differently.

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