In Houston today, an elderly couple sat, seemingly elegantly from my street-level vantage point, at a small table on the second floor open hallway of a run-down apartment building and appeared to be relishing with quiet joy the crisp, sun-dappled afternoon breeze.

In Cabo San Lucas several years ago at one of the world’s most exclusive resorts, a young couple sat, demonstrably well-off, at a small table on a second floor patio perched above a posh spa, and jabbed their dainty forks into fresh ceviche washed down with champagne, and appeared to be bored by the breezes that carried soft stirrings of the Pacific and caressed them as they went through the motions of yet another afternoon in paradise.

At home, my bathtub–where bubbles frolic and lavender scents emerge–is more than eighty years old. When I am submerged in it, the sensation I have is no less embracing than the one I experienced at the exclusive resort in Cabo San Lucas.

There, in the sunken tub three times the size and one fraction the age of the one in my home, the expectations borne of promises of an otherworldly experience that couldn’t possibly live up to the reality of, at the end of the day, just another bath, deprived my immersion in this elegant, watery cocoon of any beyond-the-ordinary appeal.

It’s all a matter of perspective.