Beautifully Simple

Once a friend of mine told me to look at a tree.

So I did and commented that it was a very nice tree.

He shook his head and proceeded to accuse me of not seeing it.

I immediately protested,"I see the tree. It’s a lovely tree."

“You don’t see it. How can you not see the tree?”

“It's right there, I'm looking right at it. I see the tree.”

"No, you don't. If you saw the tree, you would be excited right now."

The argument lasted a while, only ending when I showed ample enthusiasm over a particularly exciting leaf. While the conversation was humorous, it made me wonder how many of us really look at our world. How many of us really see it?

While I don't expect everyone to go around getting hyped up about every tree in sight, I do wish we would look more closely, that we would pay attention to the small details around us. Our world holds so many treasures given to us to enjoy, and we ignore them.

How rare it is for us to stop and look at the clouds. For us to lay in the grass and feel the kiss of the sunshine. There is magic to be found in the hot mugs of tea, the sound of crinkling paper, the scent of pine and freshly cut grass; yet, we ignore this magic daily.   

We look at everything around us as 'just'.  Roads are just roads, squirrels are just squirrels, life is just life. In looking at the world as “just”, we miss the opportunity to find the spectacular in the ordinary.

Life is beautiful and filled with beautiful things that may never be more than lovely, but that's okay. If something is already lovely, does it really need to be more? Is it not enough for the stars to fill the sky with light? Is it not enough for the ocean waves to pound upon the shore with a rhythm unrivaled by any drum? Must these things have more purpose than beauty, and must we understand them in order to enjoy them?

There is treasure all around us, value in all the simple things that we just ignore and forget. All these sweet and wonderful things are shoved to the side, written off as just unimportant.

And we do the same to people. We look at the humans passing by and are numb to the fact that they are souls. Lives, being lived as fully as our own. We see the sheer number and think that because people are everywhere, they are ordinary. Pretty maybe, but as commonplace as roses.

They're just people.

Sometimes, we even write off ourselves. We think, or at least I think, “I'm just average. I'm unimportant. Replaceable, expendable, just there for one moment, not to be missed the next.”

“I'm just me.”

Hmph. If we are "just", well then, we're just enough, thank you.

See, just as I think there is magic to be found in all the commonplace around us, I think there's something special about every life. Every person brings something and even if that something is the same thing a thousand others bring, somehow, it's still unique and wonderful.

There is this great word that is explains it well: gestalt. Gestalt basically means “an organized whole that is more than the sum of its parts.”

That is what it means to be human, I would contend. People are more than their looks, their qualities, their personalities. When we get to know someone, it’s more than just their likes and dislikes we're discovering. We're discovering them, their whole, their totality, their pieces that can't be separated one from another.

Because a person is more than just the mixture of their traits and mannerisms. Take two people with completely similar skills and likes and personalities, and you still have different people. To be a person is to be a gestalt.

People are more that just the sum of the different pieces we define them by. You are a whole being, worth more than the sum you bring to the table. I am a whole being, worth more than just pieces that make me.

People might be common but we are each unique wholes of infinite value and as such, not one of us is "just" anything.

You are a masterpiece.

A spectacular something in your own simple packaging.

A treasure to be valued beyond measure.

No matter what, you are beautiful, unique in all the world.

You are not a common rose.

“You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world." ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince