Stop Seeking, Start Seeing

One of the best lessons I learned recently was that sometimes we can get so caught up in looking for something specific that we may miss something else equally as wonderful.

Billy and I love to travel.

We just don't always do it well together.

He has some crazy notion that I know where everything is and how to get to it even if I've never been there before.

Maybe it's a man thing.

Of course, this is not a new problem for us. We had our very first fight as a married couple while on our honeymoon in the Bahamas - because I couldn't find the zoo. We walked and walked and walked up a dusty road looking for the zoo.

The Bahamas in August is just a little toasty, too.

We finally stopped and turned around and headed back, obviously no longer interested in the zoo. We saw the sign for it on the way back, partially obscured by vines and stuff. But, the fight wasn't completely that I couldn't find the zoo. It was that Billy found a street vendor and bought one bottle of orange juice and drank it in front of me without offering me as much as a sip.

Like I said, it was a little toasty outside that day....

Anyway, I've gotten use to our obstacle in traveling.

So, 20 years later, our anniversary trip, in Rome, and some things never change.

I actually have a fairly decent sense of direction. I know how to look at the Sun and get my bearings and all of that. Prior to this trip my biggest challenge had been New York City. You can't see the Sun for all the tall buildings so I had to develop another plan.

But I have NEVER been so turned around in all my life as I was in Italy. No matter what we did, we could not figure out how to get where we were headed. We even did the smart stuff like turning around and retracing our steps to get back to the beginning and start over and we would manage to goof up even that.

So, on that first Sunday afternoon we'd managed to turn a 10 minute walk to the sightseeing bus into an hour, or two, or so, and still couldn't get to the meeting point. Tired and more than a little frustrated I finally just suggested that we stop.

Right where we were.

I looked around and saw a large staircase. So, we went to the top to, much like the bear, see what we could see.

What we found was an incredible museum. We spent a couple of hours inside, just looking at sculptures and portraits and incredible art.

We'd stopping seeking and just starting seeing. We'd quit trying to just find one specific place and took in our surroundings. I couldn't help but wonder what all we missed that morning while we were focused on the map and where we were on it.

How many things did we not have time to see because we'd spent so much time just tying to find one thing?

(I know there were lots of things there that we didn't see - the Spanish steps, the Pantheon, the mozzarella bar,,, But, those are all just reasons to go back someday.)

How much in our lives do we miss because we are only seeking and not seeing? How many opportunities pass us by simply because they aren't what we were looking for?

I'd venture to say there is much. I think I am probably missing a lot in my world because I don't really stop to see all that is around me.

I might have just come up with my New Year's Resolution - stop seeking, stop seeing.

Oh, and one thing has changed, When we got to the museum we went into the snack bar - and SHARED a Diet Coke.