Eyes That See Further

I spent this morning trying to reach the top shelf in my kitchen. I was standing on my tiptoes, stretching my fingers, feeling frustrated that I couldn’t quite grab the jar I needed. It made me think about how much of our lives are spent looking at things right in front of our noses. We get so caught up in the immediate, the small, and the reachable. We forget that there is a different way to see the world—from a height that makes the ground look like a distant memory. There is a quiet grace in being tall, in having a perspective that isn’t cluttered by the mess of the floor. It must be peaceful to look over the tops of trees and see the horizon as a flat, unbroken line. It makes me wonder if we are missing the bigger picture simply because we are too busy looking down at our own feet. What would change if we could lift our heads just a little higher?

Kirsten Bruening has taken this beautiful image titled Madagascar. It captures that same sense of quiet, elevated observation that I was thinking about today. Does this face make you feel like you are being watched from somewhere very far away?