The Shape of a Secret

I spent twenty minutes this morning trying to find my keys, only to realize they were sitting in plain sight on the kitchen counter the whole time. I had looked at that spot a dozen times, but my brain simply refused to register them. It is strange how we can stare directly at something and still miss its true form. We see what we expect to see, filtering out the rest to keep our world tidy and predictable. But sometimes, when the light hits just right or we are forced to slow down, the familiar suddenly shifts. A simple object becomes a puzzle, a shadow turns into a landscape, and the mundane reveals a hidden layer we had completely overlooked. It makes me wonder how many other things are hiding in the open, waiting for us to stop rushing long enough to actually see them for what they are.

Kirsten Bruening has captured this feeling perfectly in her image titled It’s Just an Illusion. It reminds me that reality is often just a matter of how we choose to look at it. Does this image change the way you see the small things in your own home?