To see souls

You walk down the street, or cram onto the metro during rush hour, and you're surrounded by a mob of faces.
A body - that's just a bundle of cells, proteins, water, blood - atoms, matter.
The you I perceive is perceived as such because lightwaves bounce off the matter making up you, and I have these rods by night these cones by day that are oh, so, adept at visualizing you.
But that's not you, that's your body.
The stinky, ratty clothes that could really use a wash; the overly proper and too perfectly polished get up; your wrinkling skin that's too old for the time you've spent here; that long, warm, dark hair falling down to your waist; those knees that give way, frail from too many adventures necessity took you on; your protruding veins, your protruding eyes, everything bulging out of a body too thin -- every single physical feature by which I too often judge capacity for life and love and loveability -- none of those perceptions are really you. It's just light bent a certain way due to a living, breathing, moving mass of matter. Which does have a lot of beauty, yes, and a lot of stories to tell. You are, in part, your body, but you are also so much more.

Your soul.

That's what I can't see. That's what I usually don't see or think of when the light's just right and I'm moving down the street quickly, when I see you all everywhere, around me in a lecture hall for 650 beings. But your soul, your heart, your mind... That's what's going to last and that's what is there to love, first, and most.

I want to learn to see the beauty in every broken and perfectly created body - I want to see souls.

A few months ago, I was with a group of friends and we were discussing objectification, how we are all too focused on the surface. Two sides seemed to form, as we brought up strategies for how we're trying to fight this human tendency. One side said: strive to expand your definition of beauty, to perceive everyone as beautiful in a different way; the other: remember that beauty, the surface, isn't what's most important - don't let beauty matter so much to begin with.

I think though, that if we'd talked a little longer, there would have been no cause for disagreement, because I'm certain that the two can go hand in hand. It wouldn't do our capacity to appreciate beauty justice if we strove to stop valuing it, but, it is also true that it is not all-important, especially not as we define it. That's why I want to see hearts, minds, spirits, and to see these in and through the body. We do experience life through bodies after all - experiences write on each of us, our skin, fingers, eyes, and hair catching all the unassorted unfinished pieces of life story, and laying them out in one great, ever expanding and changing corpus. This, life's external imprint, is tied to its internal marks; it's in the interweave that we find people, and what is each person? As I believe it, each of us is an image-bearer of the divine. Once you see that, it's impossible for a perception of each individual as beautiful to not follow, and this beauty comes with a very expanded, supernatural definition indeed.

I want to remember that each person I perceive is not some static, 2D point that drifts in, then out, of my line of vision, not some body only, but this huge complex sphere, a planet with rings that overlap and interfere with many others' rings, just as mine do in each of the relationships I do and don't hold dear.

To not perceive a library or a metro full of ever-studying and journeying robots who drift in and out, relieving each other of their shifts, but as people that are every bit as dear to God and as much His image-bearers as I hope myself to be.

I want to see you as a bundle of emotion, intelligence, thought, aspiration, and love. To see your beautiful bright eyes, yes, but to see them as beautiful because they are reflective of whatever it is, within, that is you. Because you, you bear the image of the Most High God.

I want, desperately, to walk through life seeing souls; to not just perceive in a way that is limited by light and matter, but to see.

At Sea

I saw an island tip today, a little peninsula jutting out that looked exactly like the one I’d imagine the Pevensies and Trumpkin the Dwarf would’ve rounded in their small canoe right upon re-entry into Narnia at Prince Caspian’s beginning. The sand was all bright white, likely made of the same stuff I was standing on: millions upon millions of pieces of seashell, worn down to near grains by ages of tirelessly roving waves. Above that were the trees – tall, dark, and mostly evergreen; these forests must certainly be just as capable of containing ghosts as the ones in that book, or at least of inspiring rumours thereof.

Here in Montague Harbour, as it is all up and down the West Coast, the forests are so full of life the plants hardly know where to go. They grow at haphazard angles, branches jutting here and there, twisting, intertwining, weaving together a collective forest carpet: ferns, pines, salal, more, and, my and most people's favourite, the arbutus tree. They all reach out towards the sea. Everything, everything, is green – if not wholly, then bright moss grabs hold, ensuring that each living thing is capable of joining in to that wild and hallowed chorus, breathing: Life.

There are otters, sea lions, herons, oysters, and crabs in abundance. Sometimes I wonder if I was horribly cruel to kill all the barnacles I’ve killed. When all is growing, even the ground you tread is home to millions of creatures. Everything is alive. Even the rocks, great walls of stone, are in a constant process of slow transformation. They’ll be pockmarked with holes, like a wall in some city of cave dwellers, or sometimes have large scoops taken right out, as if the sea were a greedy child going in for too large a scoop of ice cream.

I love it here. There must be few places in the world, or in North America at least, where you can find so many distinct shades of green and blue, and where you share an instant bond of camaraderie and mutual life-love with every person you meet, confirmed in a wave, smiling nod, or friendly greeting.

If ever the chance comes your way, seize it, and simply be here, if only for a short time. Breathe in the salty air, float a long while, talk, walk, sit, explore a long while, and savour the remoteness of it all, how real and alive everything is. It’s good for the soul. 

If you're feeling anxious

Lots of life going on lately.
I find this song so so calming and dreamy. Music is one of the best remedies for stress; good music can lift you out of life and put you in a moment removed from everything else. In that separation, it can soothe your soul, give you time to think clearly, and ease you back into reality. Music, beauty, gives you a fresh perspective.
This song has yet to fail to relax, especially when I'm stressed and studying.
"Ollie Falls Asleep" - Berlinist. Enjoy :)