Taking the time to look at something mundane, to really focus in on it, is something I’ve found to be a wonderful exercise. Something boring only differs from exciting things in that there is less emotion around it. It seems so small and simple, but yet we feel the difference so intensely. After a period of time when I’ve been saturated with emotions, I like to observe the simple things. I think we can learn just as much from them.
You begin to realise that everything casts a shadow only when it is exposed to the light. Everything has a reflection, even if the reflection is only in your eyes. There are multiple sides to everything, multiple perspectives. The options may be overwhelming sometimes, and highly restrictive at other times. The question is always, which perspective are you going to choose?
Sometimes we feel as if life chooses for us. But the truth is that even then, there is power in deciding to choose what’s seemingly arrived on its own. When you do, even if it’s mundane, love begins to reveal itself to you. You appreciate something so small, and start to generate the courage to appreciate things that you hadn’t even realised were already good in your life.
It could be the simplicity of a flower, fake or real. The shape of its petals, its stem, its leaves, its vase. The texture of the wall on which it casts its shadow, the glass window which holds its reflection. Almost as if the flower herself were looking in the mirror and admiring her own beauty.
I sit in a cafe looking at this flower, and then I stop to look at my own reflection. My eyes are dark near the bridge of my nose, my hair is flat, my lips are small and pale, my skin seems tired… I think to myself, somewhere amongst the fog in my brain, is there really any beauty to be found in this reflection? Somehow we look at ourselves, and we naturally spot the inadequacies first. Can you withstand this discomfort for a little longer?
Maybe looking at ourselves causes a fountain of emotions to flow, maybe you consider it mundane, or maybe it causes you to pull yourself away and pretend what you see is not there. But if you could, just one time, treat your reflection like taking a photograph. Consider your face in different lights, different shades, from different angles. Explore it, don’t be afraid of it, treat it as a subject and switch lenses. Consider that it both pleases and displeases, but that these are just two sides of the same you. And you, you are one of a kind… never to be experienced in the same way at each moment.
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