When traveling abroad, many tourists are agog with “OMG, it’s super-duper old here!” Then they end their attention at that, check their watches, and hurry on to the Next Big Thing in their tourist guidebook. But the occasional traveler looks deeper to notice the little things: the hidden beauty beneath the wearing, the struggle, and smells, translating it into an even deeper something.
This uncommon traveler notices not just that the streets are cobblestone, but that each stone is so worn that you can almost conjure the horse that clomped on it many hundreds of years ago. Not just that a building is blue, but that there are so many coats of coloring spanning so many tens of decades that it is an impossible blue made from an irreproducible combination of ingredients.
For quite a while, I have made it my way to notice the overlooked in the world.
My partner jokes that I can be a dangerous driver because I don’t just notice pretty clouds, say something nice about it, then carry on. No, I see the pretty clouds and I can’t stop looking. I feel deeply filled with wonder and amazement, and I can’t help thinking aloud about how incredible it is that just the happenstance of the positioning of water vapor and the angle of the sunlight with the rods and cones in our eyes all combine together to create something that can make me almost cry because it is so beautiful. And that our very capacity to feel this depth means something immense that is undiscoverable and inexpressible, and… Yeah. I am like this most days. I promise I often pull over.
It is the lucky person who has the awareness and allows the time for this. At my best, I live in a dot-to-dot between mini-epiphanies that go largely unexpressed but make me a little teary-eyed. It can sometimes be distracting, but I am very lucky.