23 Nov Finding Beauty in the Familiar
At 30,000 feet the Sandia Mountains are beautiful in a completely different way than they are at ground level. As our plane descends into Albuquerque, I can see the dark green pine and fir trees that line the ridges and valleys. The setting sun splashes a pink light over the rocky peaks.
I didn’t always look at the mountains this way.
When I was a graduate student living and working in Albuquerque, my appreciation for the mountains went as far as recognizing them as a useful landmark to know which way was east.
That all changed one evening. I was attending a faculty dinner at a New Mexican restaurant located at the base of the mountains. Some addiction treatment researchers were visiting us from Denmark and we thought they might like to taste some of the local New Mexican cuisine.
The problem was that we could barely get our Danish visitors into the restaurant. They got out of the car and stood, completely transfixed, in front of the mountain. They were amazed by the colors of the rocks. They marveled at the shape of the peaks and admired the deep shadows. They talked excitedly about the tiny plants they noticed growing out of the rocky soil.
They were in such awe of it all.
We were standing in the very same place with the very same view of the mountains. Yet, the mountains I was looking at were familiar, bordering on boring. The mountains they were seeing were breathtakingly magnificent. It wasn’t about what we were seeing, but how we were seeing it.
I liked their mountains much better than mine.
For the rest of the years I spent in Albuquerque, and even now when we visit my husband’s family, the mountains look very different to me. I delight in the pink cast as the sun is setting. I admire the contrast of rolling slopes and the rugged cliffs. I notice the beauty in the wildflowers and cacti that dot the mountains with color. I see the magic of the mountains.
Thanksgiving is a day full of traditions and familiarity. Perhaps you are reading this while sitting in a familiar chair as you take a break between familiar conversations to glance at your phone. You might be getting ready to eat a plate full of familiar food. Perhaps even the people that surround you today are all too familiar, too. Sometimes all of that familiarity can numb us to the beauty of what surrounds us.
I pass this story of the mountain along in hopes that on this day full of the familiar you find ways to make the ordinary come alive.
Happy Thanksgiving to you.