To the Left...

To the left... to the left...
~ Beyoncé

Every morning, I go downstairs for breakfast. Sometimes, I carry it upstairs to eat it by the computer, scrolling mindlessly through some website or another. Other times, I stay downstairs and eat at the table facing the family room where, often, someone has the TV on and I end up mindlessly staring at it.

But the other day, I sat down at the table with my bowl of cereal and the TV blaring in front of me, and something made me turn to my left.

And there it was - a bay window looking out onto the backyard. It was always there, but I guess I just hadn't paid much attention to it before. And as I looked out at the trees, the flowers, the squirrels, the blue sky, it was so beautiful, so peaceful, so revitalizing. So I turned my chair towards the window, sat my cereal bowl on my lap, and just enjoyed the calm view of the world.

That is a morning that has stuck in my memory, unlike the mindless other mornings I have spent being entertained by the emptiness of an electronic device. 

That morning, I realized that sometimes, it's as simple as that - turning your head, looking a different way, seeing something new, changing where you look. 

We have a tendency toward routine. Toward what we know. We often get stuck in one way of thinking, one way of being. Almost as if we live our life with horse blinders on. Doing things as we always did. Seeing things as we always do.

But there is another way. Another viewpoint. If only we would only take off our blinders and see.

Sometimes, it's not about searching elsewhere for things. Sometimes, it's as simple as opening our eyes and seeing what's right in front of us.

Or what's to our left.

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