Please get this leaf off of my head!

I'm heart-broken. My friend Marcia moved away. She has a genius mind and always has the most insightful observations. One of my favorites: the ant theory. This theory compares us humans to ants living in Central Park. We are all so busy working, each carrying a burdensome leaf on our head, that we never pause to look around us. We never look up and see this amazing world we live in. Ahh, there's a whole world out there, so much bigger than we ever imagined. If we could just take those blasted leaves off our heads, every once and a while and look up, maybe our lives would be different.

Did any of you see 60 minutes two weeks ago about the Hadron Collider? Talk about broadening our views. Essentially the goal of the collider is to crash the tiniest particles together and recreate the conditions that existed at the very beginning of creation. The physicists interviewed said that through these experiments, humans might be able to better understand the nature of the world--how particles behave and interact. Perhaps even learn to transport humans through space, on a particle level. Some think that when the collider is actually set in motion, it could create a huge black hole that could suck us all into it. Though an unlikely scenario, we may, said the scientists, over time, be able to discover other dimensions of time and space.

I'm definitly a leaf carrier, perhaps sometimes a bit too over-focused on the chore at hand. Forgetting the big picture. My husband is naturally more of a big-picture sort of person. On Saturday, after he (most kindly) made several trips to the dump (to discard our broken old garage door,) the family got in the car for a little trip to the apple farm. When I sat in the car, my eye immediately caught sight of big hole in the smooth fabric ceiling of the car, apparently made while transporting the old garage door. Then I looked to the side of me and saw a tear in the leather on the door, then a big scratch all along the interior of the car. I pointed it out to my husband. "Oh well," he said. And that was that. But I could not take my eye off of that hole, and that tear and that scratch. The entire car ride, that's all I could see. I was completely consumed by my time and place and couldn't stretch my neck above it to see a broader view.

Somehow, the next day, Sunday, it all washed away, and I didn't care about it anymore. I had caught a glimpse of something bigger, something more important, and I let it go. I find that having a day to let go of temporal things, and focus on the mind and spirit, helps me to renew and take that blasted, blinding leaf off my head--at least for a few days!

(Oh and yes, this photo is of my husband's view from his office, overlooking Central Park. Now I know; that's it! It must be this view constantly before his eyes. That's what gives him a big-picture perspective!)