Finding things
I sat down in front of my computer.
I put my fingers on the keyboard
And after a while, I found what you are reading.
And now you’ve found it, too.
Amazing, the things we find.
The prompt
At the writers’ group the other morning, the prompt was to write about “Finding things.” Write about some amazing things that you’ve found.
I immediately knew what I wanted to write about.
Everything.
I stopped, looked around the room, and found amazing things. A crumb on the table. A wrinkle on Deb’s green shirt. A bit of red at the top of Grace’s blue computer. Bobbi, next to me. The pattern of the room’s flowered wallpaper.
If I closed my eyes, the thought came to me; I might see fireworks.
I didn’t even have to close my eyes. The fireworks were there.
Amazing.
“Dad, are you on drugs?” I imagined one of my daughters asking after reading this.
“No,” I said. And then I thought about it. “It’s a state of mind. It’s the result of my practice.”
The practice
“What’s your practice?” asked an imaginary reader.
You see what you are looking for, I wrote.
If you look for amazing things, you will see amazing things.
If you look for miracles, you see miracles.
I look for miracles, and I see them.
Life is a miracle
Life is a miracle.
Most people don’t see it that way.
I didn’t most of my life,
I noticed only what I needed to notice to carry out the pedestrian, utilitarian, commonplace, mundane, prosaic, ordinary, routine, everyday, conventional, customary, unremarkable, quotidian, trivial, banal, typical, familiar, habitual, hackneyed, stereotypical tasks that filled my days.
Sometimes there was cool shit, too. But mostly just did shit without being aware that I was doing shit in the midst of miracles.
Now I see the miracles.
What this means
You are a miracle. I am a miracle. My imaginary readers are miracles.
Every “thing” is a miracle.
Every moment is a miracle.
Writing is a series of miracles created by a miracle, created for miracles to read.
I can look up from my writing and find a miracle.
I can return to the keyboard and find the act of writing miraculous.
“I don’t get it,” said someone who didn’t get it. “This doesn’t seem miraculous to me.”
“I do," said someone who did.
How about you?
Look for miracles. Look for beauty. Look for surprises.