Perspective.

For the last 6 months we've had and interloper at our running group. Deb was here in Brisbane with her husband and family from England while her husband worked. Deb used to run - A LOT - in England and Europe but had had surgery on a foot injury then had twins and the running had not been happening so much lately. She met one of our members who enticed her along and soon she was running 5 times a week.

Her husband's contract finished and she's heading back home this week but I was lucky to get to run with her for our long run on Saturday. It was such an eye-opening experience to run with someone who's mentally saying good-bye to a place she's fallen in love with. I got to run through our usual routes looking through her eyes and really appreciating how beautiful our city is and how lucky we are to enjoy such good weather year round. Even the muddy Brisbane River looked better to my eyes than it has in a long time.

It's not been the first time this week that I've had to look from someone else's perspective. I had my sister-in-law over last weekend and I was looking very critically at my house through my own eyes before she arrived. I wanted everything to look nice and all I could see was the mould, the dirt, the dog hairs and all the imperfections that I can ignore every other day of the year. I had even apologised in advance about the state of the house. When she arrived she told me off for exaggerating and I realised that she wasn't here to critique our home, she just wanted to spend time with her family.

Both events have made me stop and think. It's so easy to get caught up with nit-picking or to ignore the familiar just because you see it all the time. I'm determined to spend a little more time being less self-absorbed and appreciating my life, my family and my surroundings.