Being a witness

The universe is a lonely place. We won't ever be able to observe the entirety of existence, much less explore it. It's unlikely that humans will ever make it away from our cosy little fireplace, the sun.

But each person's life here on earth offers infinite variations on a melody. From the mundane - 10 ways to cook an egg - to the profound - the decimal numbers between zero and one - our lives, and more specifically, how we go about them, are complex and interesting.

Most lives are like trees in a forest. They break the soil and grow into the sun, competing against other trees to catch the most rays. They grow old and die, and when they die, another takes its place. Like a single tree deep in the forest, most lives are unseen. Maybe a squirrel runs up a branch and makes a nest. Maybe a backpack snags against the trunk and leaves behind a shredded piece of canvas. But the tree stands alone among all the other lonely trees.

It is a rare privilege to become witness to a life: dutifully, kindly observing its rhythms and stumbles. Love is seeing a person, as completely as possible, withholding judgement and celebrating its everyday beauty. The beauty of being an organising principle, if nothing else. The beauty of a big family nose or a filthy sense of humour, of hospitality unbound and bunions and bad teeth and back pain and lust and other appetites.