Tiny Points of Light
Often I find myself on airplanes and in airports. I love to watch people and try to detach from what I am seeing, play the role of the neutral observer. Try to clear my mind of all judgment (notice I said TRY) and just watch, as if life is just a great big sociology experiment, or a scene perhaps in a play.
When I am really in touch with this, sometimes I can even observe myself — this is really a separate topic for another day — which is a very powerful tool for me to calm down, stop reacting and judging, and just be.
Airports are wonderful places to watch people. What a miracle life really is, all of us in one place, separate yet together, each person a unique spirit, with so many stories to tell.
I tried a little experiment at the airport the other day. We flew in at night, and I love, when there is no cloud cover, watching the tiny points of light on the earth below and trying to imagine where they are, what is happening, see them as proof of our existence, in perspective with the enormity of the earth and sky. This can be a magical view and I got off the plane feeling light and full and connected to the vastness of Creation and our Creator. Feeling love.
I’m also sure part of this expansive feeling was a book I’d been reading on the plane, “The Invitation,” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. It had opened my spirit up to authenticity and I was really in the joy of just being me, a human among humans, feeling very grateful.
So my experiment was to observe, detached and with love, every person I could while I was walking. And instead of inventorying the negative, I concentrated on finding something of beauty about each person. How one woman had beautiful hair. Or smooth skin. (One very cute guy had a very cute walk! Not hard to be appreciative!) Tried to look at people who appeared ordinary or even flawed, and pick out one beautiful thing about them and focus on that. Once I got going I was able to quickly see something beautiful in many people passing by. And I was amazed at how my attitude towards them turned to love, kindness, empathy, connectedness.
The next natural outcome of this experiment was that I became aware that I was smiling. And people smiled back. I did a thoughtul gesture or two — held a door, said hello, chatted with a woman pushing her daughter in a wheelchair.
By the time I got to the elevator from my gate I was feeling full of love and very happy. A nice, pervasive, warm happy.
I promptly fired up the car, cranked up the new Eagles CD, and sang all the way home.
We are those tiny points of light we can see while we are flying high over our Earth. We can be tiny points of light in our own lives and the lives of others. By doing simple, unnoticed, unconditional small things.
Try it. I have a goal of trying to make this a daily practice. How much beauty is around us if we look.
I’ll update later on the results!
on February 28th, 2008 at 9:13 am
There is beauty in each and every one of us. A lot of people argue about whether we should just concentrate on a person’s positive features. I grew up practicing what you have written in the article so basically, everybody has some sort of goodness in them. However, some friends think that I’m being too naive and trusting. My mind can have tug-of-war sessions every now and then.