The Weight of Gold

I walked past the community garden this morning and realized I couldn’t name half the flowers blooming there. I used to know them all, or at least I told myself I did. It felt like a small failure, a sign that I’ve been moving too fast to notice the ground beneath my feet. We spend so much of our lives looking at the horizon, waiting for the next big thing to arrive, that we forget to look at the color of the earth right here. There is something overwhelming about a field that refuses to be anything but bright. It doesn’t ask for permission to take up space; it just exists in its own brilliance, demanding that you stop and acknowledge it. It makes me wonder how many other things are shouting for our attention in the quietest, most vibrant ways, while we are busy staring at our own shadows. If you had to stop and stand in the middle of something that made you feel small, what would it be?

Tina Panzalovic has captured this feeling perfectly in her image titled Yellow. It reminds me that sometimes the world is just waiting for us to look down and see the gold. Does this view make you want to stand still for a while, too?