When you live in the same house day after day, week after week, year after year for 20 years, you know instinctively from where every shadow is cast, what sticks of furniture to avoid in the middle of the night to not stub a toe and you’ve memorized the exact placement of the sunsets or sunrises in any given season.
I was awakened one early morning with an orange-pink color washing across my semi dark room and not being used to seeing this, ever, I got up to see who in the world was playing with lights so early in the morning before the coffee was even ready. You can’t see the sun rise from any point in my house because the trees get in the way. Determined to see this unusual color emanating from my room, I stepped outside my second-floor balcony and had to twist my body over the railing to look almost behind the house and there I beheld the most exquisite sunrise my home had ever known.
How could it be that I had invariably missed this vantage point for 20 years? Why this day in early February did the sky decide to open up my eyes? Yes, I ask those kinds of questions. All the dang time.
What an example of how living day to day over time, we get far too used to our ways, our routines and our comfort. Perhaps it was a reminder to waken early, to crane the neck every once in a while, to glimpse the unknown secrets of beauty that lie in wait.
Perhaps there are secret treasures in those we love, whose lives we think we know but maybe we’ve just become too complacent to think there is any surprise left. But I would argue that I myself behold a certain amount of allure, not yet known to others who’ve not yet asked the right questions. Point being; never stop searching for truths in the darkness, never stop questioning the deep passions that reside in every heart and always be willing to explore the tired places.
