Perhaps the latter is why so many people refuse to see beauty in anything but objects, and paradoxically love objects and use people. Yet if we’re not open to beauty inside people, we’ll never really have it in our lives.

During several years of being weary, I likely missed some of the beauty, magic, and love that was around me; because I ignored it, was skeptical of it, or simply refused to look for it. I’ve made a conscious decision to not do that anymore, but to pay attention to it, be open to it, look for it, find it.

It feels liberating to be that open again, to see and understand the beauty inside of someone not because of piles of evidence of it, but rather trusty little hints . . . like a fleeting display of vulnerability.

And though I become more aware every day that expressing I see the world like this is largely viewed skeptically, I am going to hold on to this view for as long as I possibly can. For whatever suffering being open might bring me, it is certainly not worse than the dull, numbed, hollow pain of viewing the world, and the people around me, through the eyes of a desensitized adult.