Shawn L. Bird

She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.

She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh. My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else’s; but timid, introverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence I threw back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life.

She saw things. I had not known there was so much to see.

She was forever tugging my arm and saying, “Look!”

(Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl p. 107)

This is the best part of love, isn’t it?  Spinelli is able to articulate so beautifully a special part of the best relationships.  When the world opens up because of the love you share.  When we are able to embrace things that are new to us, particularly if they challenge us, we become better.  We are never able to see things quite the same way when we’ve looked through someone else’s eyes.

The older we grow, if we keep exposing ourselves to experiences that introduce us to new views, we can become large enough to see ourselves as a tiny pinprick on a planet.  We realise our perspective is not the only one, and that there is joy in other places than where we usually find it.  There is pain in new places as well.  Be open to both, and the world expands.