Love Is Where You Find It

I have made a hobby of collecting heart-shaped rocks for many years, so I expect to see them. What I've not expected to find was a rock like the one above, with a heart-shaped opening. This has become one of my favorites now because of the "unexpected" uniqueness, yet it still has the common heart-themed thread.

In my life I often get sidetracked by how I think things should be. When the expected things in life show up, I cancel out all other things that come my way because I am satisfied. Why bother to look for the ways life could surprise me? I often think. This stale philosophy reminds me of the saying that we were not born to merely survive; we were born to thrive. This "open" rock reminds me to be open to the unique things that show up in the periphery of my life and bring them to the center of my vision for a better observation. Often what I tend to overlook will actually harmonize with my life goals and plans, which ultimately leads me toward a state of thriving.

"It is not inertia alone that causes the unspeakably monotonous and unrenewed human condition to repeat itself again and again. It is the aversion to  anything new, any unpredictable experience, which is believed to be untenable. Only he who can expect anything, who does not exclude even the mysterious, will have a relationship to life greater than just being alive."                             

Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet