Blue Heron Landing

I have something to tell you. The world has many beautiful things to show you.

This week I listened to an episode of the Zach Lowe podcast about the Knicks winning the NBA Championship. Sean Fennessey is a Knicks fan, and a Mets fan, and a Jets fan. He said, “I’m an extremely, extremely sad sports fan.” He said, “When I watch sports I’m pissed off and fearful.” The Knicks winning made it feel “like there’s a piano off my back.”

Zach and Sean talked a bit more and then Sean said this in closing (slightly condensed):

“I saw Toy Story 5 this morning with my daughter. It was an incredible movie. A blue heron landed in the middle of the LA River and we sat and watched it as we were having brunch. This is unbelievable, what this world can give us, if it just turns in your direction for a short period of time.”

I get it. And Sean’s talking about being a sports fan in particular, not about his whole view on life. But the last sentence resonated with me. Sometimes I am going through my day as though the world is turned away. And then a moment happens and I find its favor.

I have been noticing that this favor is more likely to find me when I am looking for the places where the world is always, continually, turned towards me. Last week I was in Berkeley and starting a new online course, and my partner for the course lives two miles from where I was staying, and we were able to meet up in person. I thought he might be a young tech bro without much to share, but he’s my age, and like me he works in tech but has a rich background and has a lot to share with me.

Yesterday a friend of mine from high school posted on Substack about a miracle; I went to a talk in Berkeley about the same miracle.

I met Hormeze and he was photographing cool bugs and then I found this cool bug!

There are moments of wonder like this everywhere. There is beauty and joy everywhere if I am looking for it.

You can run the risk of believing, if you’re not careful, that you are being cradled by the universe, or by God, and that everything laid out for you — even, maybe especially, your trials — is part of a divine plan for your betterment.

None of this is new. Keats saw that people called the world a “vale of tears” and said instead that the world is a vale of soul-making. He said “Call the world, if you please ‘The vale of soul-making.’” He’s begging you.