Sunday, July 11, 2010

"Little Miracles"

I gave one of my sponsees this piece of advice today: look for the little miracles. My example to him was to think about what happens when you cut your finger. It bleeds for a little while, then it heals. That's pretty fuckin amazing.

Not everyone thinks so, of course. Some people will read that and think, "well yeah, duh, so what?" Others will go further and recite the chemical process of blood clotting and move on to a discussion of the body's natural need to heal itself so that we don't die. And yes, of course those things are true, but when I think of this example, I am amazed and somewhat awed. Allow me to change the metaphor.

Some look at a painting and can deconstruct it. They can talk about the color choices made by the artist, the style of the brushstrokes, the size of the canvas and the amount of paint used. But none of those topics speak to what the painting is of. That information says nothing about the beauty of the work or the feelings which rise in us when we look at it. Just as it is when viewing a work of art, we can look at a cut and see only the technicalities of what happens as it heals, or we can look at the result and be amazed. Allow me to change the metaphor yet again.

I went to college for music, majored in composition, and I have done my share of deconstruction and analysis. But nowhere in any of my lectures did we stop to talk about how a piece of music can move someone to tears. A lot of my fellow students said there was a magic that was gone from the music once they had analyzed it. It wasn't like that for me. For me, knowing how the 'magic' works has only deepened my appreciation for it. Now, I can hear a song, analyze it as it's playing, and still feel the emotion of it. I can still feel the deep emotions of music, even when I know how it works.

There are miracles everywhere. Some might argue that 'miracle' is just a word for something we don't understand. I disagree. I think it's possible to understand exactly how something works and still find it miraculous. Healing. The beauty of a work of art. The power of moving music. The way trees grow. The sound of the wind. The color of a sunset.

A lot of addicts feel the mere fact that they're alive when they should be dead is a miracle, but we can see miracles everywhere if we want to. It's all in our perspective. We get to choose. We can look at the world and see only the ordinary, or we can see it as amazing and full of wonder. It's up to us.

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