Hidden in Plain Sight

I spent twenty minutes this morning looking for my keys, only to find them sitting right on the kitchen counter where I had placed them the night before. I had looked at that spot a dozen times, but my eyes just slid right over them. It is funny how we can stare directly at something and still not see it. We are often so busy looking for the big, loud things in our lives that we become blind to the quiet details resting right in front of us. There is a whole world happening in the margins of our day—the way a shadow stretches across the floor, or the texture of a leaf we walk past without a second thought. When we finally slow down enough to actually look, we realize that the most remarkable things were never hiding; we were just too hurried to notice them. What have you walked past today without truly seeing?

Claudio Bacinello has captured this feeling perfectly in his image titled Hispaniolan Green Anole. It reminds me that beauty is often waiting in the quietest corners if we only take the time to pause. Does this image make you want to look a little closer at the world around you?