Right Outside My Window

This tree is right outside my great-room window. I look toward it nearly every morning, as I gaze east over Silicon Valley to where the sky begins to brighten, and the sunrise arrives.

And then one morning, I saw her.

A heart.

I've been looking out this window for 20 years, but I'm seeing things differently. Maybe it's because I've been deliberately practicing what I call Bloomscrolling, my antidote to doomscrolling. Instead of scrolling through everything that's wrong with the world, I go outside and look for what's right with it.

Come walk with me.

There are tiny things and enormous things. Things that have just appeared and things that have probably been there for years waiting for me to notice. Sometimes I see them. And occasionally, they see me. This week I looked out the great-room window where I've watched hundreds, maybe thousands, of sunrises and suddenly saw a heart in a tree. How long has she been there? I have absolutely no idea.

Then, out on the trail, I spotted a magnificent buck peeking over the brush. I saw him, and then came that wonderful moment when I realized: Oh. You see me too.

Seeing and being seen. Maybe that's part of what happens when we slow down and pay attention. The familiar becomes interesting again. The ordinary becomes extraordinary. The world hasn't necessarily changed. We have.

I'm grateful for that old Hobbit Tree I couldn't recognize, for the heart outside my window, and for Mr. Antlers watching me watch him. And I'm grateful to live in a place where I can walk outside and be reminded, again and again:

There is so much here to see.  Come walk with me.