Perspective

The average person blinks anywhere from 15-25 times a minute. It is a monotonous and habitual bodily function that is so common and so completely ordinary that one will fail to detect its mere existence at almost every occurrence. Breathing too, is just another instinct instilled upon us for the simple fact that we are alive. Everything living will breathe; yet hardly any will notice when they do so. Existences like these are not acknowledged until someone or something causes a discrepancy in their pattern.


During the summer of 2006, I found a discrepancy. I spent the night at Hannah’s; her small cozy house was enough to accommodate us, but a phone call changed our plans for the night and it looked as if the evening was now going to be spent in her backyard with two others. The night air was cool, starry and slightly crisp. Nothing however, placed this night above the rest, and it was flying by as quickly as it had started, with no regards for time. A few hours later, I felt a chill making its way up my spine and into my shoulders. The early hours of the morn were bringing the cold air with them and I heard some one say “soon the sun will be coming up.” Then, it occurred to me...I had never before watched a sunrise. People talk of the sun setting, and how magnificent it is, but have they ever seen it awake?

There, in that small dirty little backyard I witnessed a spectacular event. The chill left my shoulders—the sky dissolved from black to yellow. The sun was not yet so bright that it could not be gazed upon, but in contrast, had a most mesmerizing effect on the eyes. I wondered how something so powerful could be so silent when it made its grand entrance to mankind, and how something so beautiful is overlooked by millions of people everyday. As the bright orange ball emerged effortlessly into the sky, I realized that I blinked. In this pivotal moment, I noticed, in depth, the common ordinaries that I had not before. The sun was higher and brighter than when I last gazed upon it, and the split second it took to shut my eyes and open them again made a difference. Previous perspectives on what was wonderful in life were changed—substance thus revealed. Beauty and discovery were birthed inside of a wooden fence.

The backyard is an unforgettable place not because of what it was, but because of what it became. It is exceptional because it housed a “discrepancy” that shorted my breath and expanded the space from one lash to the other for the first time. The rarities in the world today can only be recognized if one cherishes its ordinaries. Moreover, the sun will awake and disappear every 24 hours, and while few will open their eyes to the habitual existence, I will gaze upon it with the knowledge that the brink of discovery is in plain sight...our job is nothing more than to distinguish it.