I feel like an aging star that's going out like a bright supernova. I'd exploding with ideas, thoughts, feelings. They're dancing on the stages of my mind and soul like Tchaikovsky's dancing sugar plum fairies. They're pirouetting, leaping, arabesque-ing, batterie-ing, pointe-ing almost uncontrollably from my head and heart, down my arms, and into making my fingers do their own ballet steps on the keyboard.
At a glance, the paper seemed simple enough. Just a blank sheet. Then, I stopped merely looking and began to see, to see deeply, so deeply I felt I was an electron microscope. And, guess what I saw. I saw trees. I saw sun. I saw soil. I saw rain. I saw seeds. I saw nutrients. I saw growth. I saw miracles of life. I saw all that made up the previous life of that piece paper. I saw fibers. I saw invention. I saw imagination. I saw ingenuity. I saw creativity. I saw civilization. I saw process. I saw progress. I saw all that made up the human capacity and potential.
I saw what seemed so simple only when I just looked was truly complex and even mysterious when I intensely saw. I read somewhere something someone said that stuck with me: "He who looks outside, dreams; he who looks inside, awakens." Ain't that the truth. And, I will attest without any reservation, hesitation, or equivocation that when you see...through the prisms of unconditional faith, belief, hope, and love, that [person] will enter your heart, awaken your heart, and stir your soul. So, I wonder what is it that we can discover if we stop just looking and begin to see, to see deeply, to see ourselves, to see others? What if we stopped being content to merely gaze at images on a screen? What if we were no longer satisfied being spectators in an arena? What if we started looking other people in the eye, not just through a camera lens? If we participated in, engaged in, experienced and lived first hand, touched and felt, saw and listened to, were fully involved, and lived the details, we see...a place of unseen potential, a place of possibilities, a place where we should keep open our options.
Understand that true faith, belief, hope, and love, that the acts of true empathy, sympathy, and compassion, occur only when we are aware of, attentive to, mindful of, caring about, and knowing--really knowing--who that person...with you is...Someone once said that the real measure of how you live is the extent to which your presence and absence both mean something significant. How true. How true.
-Louis Schmier
No comments:
Post a Comment