我讨厌这个问题

Everyone asks The Question, but in an expectant way.  Like they know what your answer is going to be before you give it.

They don't really know.

It's finding yourself in the middle of the grocery store staring at 1400 different kinds of Earl Grey tea feeling like you've just won the lottery and then somebody called you to tell you that your great uncle's wife also left you a fortune.  All you can think about is the irony of wanting just one tiny thing for so long and suddenly having more than you could ever need.

It's being captured by the kind of sunset that makes you pull over to the side of the road, roll your window down, and gape.  You decide to quit your job and paint so you'll never again forget that the sky can have color.

It's pushing a button to clean your dishes instead of bending over the abnormally short sink for what seemed like half your day.

It's feeling like you're on the outside of an inside joke.  Everyone gets it but you.

It's the sheer bliss of eating Mexican food whenever you want.

It's talking to somebody you've known your entire life and realizing they don't really know you at all.

It's feeling like a stranger when you are surrounded by old friends.  You aren't sure if you're one of them or an alien.

It's knowing that the people you love still love you no matter how much you've changed.

It's a Friday night in a coffee shop, that doesn't feel complete without people around you speaking Chinese.

It's a jumble of feelings fighting for priority inside you, and not knowing which one is real.

It's cursing every time you have to fill up your gas tank, because you no longer have the option of putting a coin in a slot and taking the bus downtown.

It's the welcome truth that people are people no matter where you go.  Some are sweet, some are annoying.  Some smell bad and some always know how to make you smile.  That doesn't change when you leave the hemisphere you grew up in.

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.
-Lin Yutang

假的眼睛

I opened my eyes to a pink dawn today.  Yesterday it was a blinding yellow.  Each time morning comes it looks a little bit different.  I was throwing away my old contact lenses today, and replacing them with new when I thought about all that these lenses have seen.  It hasn't been a remarkable length of time since I first bonded with this particular pair of synthetic eyes but they've experienced so much.  I probably remember less than 10% of the wonders they captured and funneled into the sensors inside my head—then I threw them away.

These contacts were the first object to receive the light rays when I saw my sister for the first time in a year.  They flooded with tears when we summited Mount Antero together, as we thought about the day, 3 years earlier, when we'd stood on top with our brother.  They watched as clouds hovered, and gathered, and threatened to wipe us off the earth with their fury.  They wondered at the rainbow that completely encircled the sun like a halo.  They were still and silent as a herd of 23 mountain goats passed in front of them on the wisp of a trail overlooking our camp.

The most remarkable change in my eyesight comes--not from a new pair of contacts, but from the paradigm shift from behind.  These contacts didn't aid directly in that change, but they were witness to the constantly evolving that takes place in determining my perspective.  Every day I discover that something that I thought was black or white is actually grey.  I learn that from someone else's point of view, my way looks terribly wrong.  I learn that my eyes can make mistakes, and that things aren't always as clear as they seem.

Soon my contacts will be in a landfill somewhere, no longer enabling me to see.  But the changes that have taken place while they were with me will remain, and I'll remember what I learned with their help.  I can close my eyes and recall the exact color of terror the sky turned as the wind whipped a storm out of nothing high in Colorado.  I'll remember the sunlight on the note we left for Clifford as I folded it and put it in the register on top of 14,269 feet of rock and dirt.  I'll know that there is beauty on this earth and it's there for a reason.

Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now.

-Bob Dylan