BBC Radio 4 20170824

It's not often that I get indignant. But for two weeks when I was working in Amsterdam, it was almost a daily occurrence. Amsterdam, unlike Glasgow, has no hills. So it is a joy for cyclists. And so, having access to a bike, I quickly assumed the mantle of princeling if not king of the road, able often to outflank queues of cars, but also frustrated by other road users, many of them tourists walking round the city.

The fact that I was as much an inconvenience to them as they to me never dawned on me... as long as I saw things from the perspective of an ardent cyclist.

When I was in the Netherlands, despite not hearing all the news emanating from Britain, I was nevertheless continually drawn into conversations about Brexit.

These weren't acrimonious debates about how Brussels and Westminster were squaring up to each other, but reflections of ordinary Dutch people, such as I had not heard before. One person took issue with how we talk about Brexit as a 'divorce'. He was keen to point out that this was a bad metaphor. For in a divorce there is often an independent arbiter, such as a judge, adjudicating between the opposing sides. (Recent news, however, suggests this is now a possibility.)

By contrast, a woman in her eighties who seemed content with the language of divorce, nevertheless took me by surprise when she said,
'We don't want this. At the moment there are 27 countries
in which universities, banks, businesses and governments
are up to their necks in working out the consequences.'

... the views of two ordinary people living on the other side of the North Sea. But they made me think.

The need to at least make people aware of other perspectives is continually illustrated in the practices and stories of Jesus, most famously the story of the Good Samaritan where he contrasts the compassion shown by a foreigner to a victim of a mugging with the seeming indifference of the locals.

And then there is the encounter he has with a crowd of self-righteous religious men who wanted Jesus to endorse the requirements of the law by approving that a woman caught in the act of adultery should be stoned to death. He doesn't comply, but instead he offers a totally different perspective, inviting those with no taint of guilt or sin to fulfil the law and throw the first stone.

So the men walk away, the eldest first.

Like me, In Amsterdam, they needed to face the humbling significance of seeing themselves from the perspective of those on the other side of the road.