Seeing, really seeing, takes time, training, and concentration. 

My New Year’s Resolution is to really begin to see the beauty all around me wrapped in subtle, often disguised, small packages.  In many ways (for me) it’s a new way of looking at the world.  Annie Dillard, in Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, likens this seeing and discovering of beauty to finding a penny–it is an acquired appreciation for depreciated objects and experience.

My wife puts up with a lot.  Behind my clever facade of being an easy-going, even-keeled, (incredibly handsome and) self-assured young man, there lies a worrier, a temperamental, easily-deflated cynic and recluse.  When someone points out a rainbow arced across the heavens, my mind turns quickly to meteorites plummeting towards earth.  I wonder if it will hurt much when I’m hit.  More than paranoia though, my mind works of its own accord, without my express consent, seeking to find that loose thread in the silver lining that will pull the whole thing apart.  Just ask Christa; it can be a real drag being married to Eyore half the time.  Thank the Lord I’m a believer; it could be a LOT worse.

So, in this new year, I’m attempting to put on the rose colored glasses or at the very least take off the gloom-tinted ones.  It’s a process of opening one’s eyes.  Here are some penny pictures: