I noticed something the other night. I was lying in bed and looking at the ceiling, and I noticed an interesting shadow. The light from the digital clock's display was causing the ceiling fan to cast a strange shadow on the ceiling. It looked like the man-eating plant from Little Shop of Horrors.
I've had that clock for several months now. The previous clock, an old one with a red LED display, stopped working, so I replaced it with one with a bigger, brighter blue-white display. This was the first time, though--just this week--that I noticed the shadow it cast.
I could have seen that shadow at any time since getting the clock. All I had to do was look up from my bed while the lights were off. But I never did. That shadow has been there these past few months, plainly visible, but I never saw it.
It makes me wonder how many other things like that we miss, things that are in plain sight that we pass by every day but somehow never notice. Just how fully do we exist in this world anyway? We're more like characters on a tv show, oblivious to the viewer and everything else in the room in which the television sits. If we're missing things that are right under our noses, how can we be expected to find things that require a bit more work to reveal?
Next time you're lying in bed at night and getting ready to go to sleep, don't close your eyes just yet. Take a minute or two to look around. You might be surprised by what you find.
