Room With a View

Peter Baker | 21:52, 25th October 2012 | Seoul, South Korea

The downside of this upside view of the skyscrapers and neon horizon is vertigo (not a wise move to poke my head out the window and look down!).

You could say I am living Gangnam Style at the moment. The pop dance craze is named after the district in Seoul where I am staying.  It's an area of high fashion, premier hotels and enough retail outlets to satisfy a shopaholic.

Today, I had lunch next door. Not at the Ritz Carlton to the left but at the Good Restaurant to the right. That is it's name in English - my keyboard can't master Korean characters. 

My host was Pastor Sam Ko, the all-singing all-dancing preacher who made such an impression on us at Highfields. He wanted me to try traditional Korean cuisine, so being the sort of person who will try anything once, I did!

At one point, I asked Sam, "What was in that dish? " He said, "Not sure, it's probably from the sea." It was too late by that point. The slippery, slimy thing was making it's way down my oesophageal tract to join the furry thing, the stringy thing and the squashy thing! As I write, it's so far so good in the digestion department!

Over food, Sam told me about their Church building project which is due to be completed in September at a cost of some 240 million dollars. He mentioned in passing that the city authorities are going to name a subway station Sa Rang (which means Love) after the church outside which it stops. It is an environmental move, allowing the 65 thousand worshippers to reduce their carbon footprint in an already teeming city.

But it wasn't the size of the project or its prestige which struck me. It was Sam's comment about how long it will take to complete.

"It has taken us three years to build the foundations and we will do the rest in a year." That was Sam's unintended observation on Perspective.

If you want to go really high, first you have to go really deep. I guess the civil engineering demands of this city with its hundreds of skyscrapers, hotel blocks and apartments, all built on hills and reclaimed floodplains, requires such an approach.

But it was a remark just as relevant to many of the other things we do in life. Studying and training for a career is one obvious example. But it's also true in forming relationships. If you want to create a friendship of trust and meaning, you need to take your time and be prepared to go deep. That doesn't happen overnight or easily. It's the product of strong foundations, shared values and lasting commitment. Once you get the foundations right, it's amazing how fast and high you can build, and how far you can go with people. 

The oriental proverb is right: "If your vision is for a year, plant wheat. If your vision is for ten years, plant trees. But if your vision is for a lifetime, plant people." 

So my room with a view has given me perspective not only on buildings but also building relationships.

One other comment on perspective came recently from Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian sky diver who fell to earth from space and broke the speed barrier. At a subsequent press conference he said, "Sometimes you have to be really high to see how really small you are." 

The God of the Universe sits enthroned above the earth. It's inhabitants are like grasshoppers to Him. But He sent the Son of His Love to build a relationship with us that would last for ever. God turns grasshoppers into giants.