By Charles Romans
Carter County Times
There is a very old saying that goes “sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.” There is always a lesson in these old sayings, and this one in particular is something like when we are in the middle of a situation it is hard to see the bigger picture. It’s understandable, really, when you consider that it is easier to see and react to what is right in front of us than it is to focus on everything else. Everything else, after all, is a lot to take in.
But there is a danger to not looking beyond our immediate needs – many, actually – not the least of which is the fact that we miss so much.
Take Carter County for instance. People live here, they work here, and they drive through here on their way to somewhere else, even if it’s just another part of the county. But do we really see the county beyond the little part that is currently in front of us? The short answer of course is no. Oh, it isn’t that we are blind because we see the roads we are driving on and the destinations we seek. It isn’t any lack of ability at all, but rather something that can be much worse if left unchecked.
We just forget to look.
Once we pass the same creek a dozen times it’s like our minds just shut it off. It still registers as a creek (or a covered bridge, or a lake, or even the architecture of a building that used to impress us) but we forget to actually see it for the amazing thing that it is as we move on with the needs of the day. And at that point we all sort of slip into another old saying, which is, “commonplace breeds contempt.” Oh, we might not actually get to the point where we dislike something, but the luster has somehow faded. And when this happens it is truly unfortunate for many reasons, not the least of which is that the fading and lack of luster is completely our own fault.
Beauty exists even when no one is there to appreciate it. The covered bridge is just as ‘quaint’ even when we speed past and barely give it a glance, and the lake still glimmers in the sunlight whether we choose to dip our toes in it or not. Ignoring things in most cases doesn’t hurt the thing in question; but it can definitely hurt us. We lose much more than the few seconds or minutes it would take to see things the same way we first saw them when we choose to force everything into the backdrop of the current moment. Things like peace and joy, and appreciation of the ‘forest.’
It doesn’t have to be every moment of every day, but we need to take some moments and some days to appreciate what we have. It might make us happier and more grateful if we do, even if only in small ways. Maybe we should just stop and take a breath occasionally and try to remember the first time we experienced something. You never know; we might even discover new things to appreciate on a brief stroll down memory lane.
We’ll never know until we try. The forest, after all, is still there. We just have to look.
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
