Abby was between 2 and 3 years old and had gone outside with Sabrina for the first snowfall of the year. Sabrina was recording on her phone the snow falling all around in the darkness and then you hear Abby’s little voice gasp with excitement, “the SNOWFLAKES are SNOW!” She had just realized the amazing fact of nature that snowflakes are indeed snow, or that snow is made of snowflakes. Her innocence and joy at the discovery of this fact of nature is a heartwarming reminder to see the beauty and wonder in all things.
It is so easy to lose the excitement of the wonders of the world and the beauty around us as we grow up and are faced with the contradictory horrors which seem to abound. As we become adults, we watch or hear the news from around the world and we experience our own tragedies. It is easy to wonder if there is anything good in the world at all.
While working as an RN in an acute care hospital, I had a patient who was my age, maybe 42 at the time. She had taken her husband lunch at his work, a construction site, and fallen through the floor one story. Her grandchild was born that day and she was sharing the news with her husband. Unfortunately, the fall was such that she hit her head and suffered from brain damage. She was never going to wake up again. She was never going to hold her new grand baby. She was never going to talk with her husband again. I had to get a urine sample and restart her IV one day. I remember having to place a new catheter and the emotions of sadness overwhelmed me. As I placed the catheter, I sobbed and asked my CNA not to tell anyone that I was crying. Driving home from work that day, I sobbed some more and couldn’t seem to stop. This was a tragedy of life. This woman’s tragic end to all she had known and her family’s loss was too much for me to bare. I wondered, “what is it all for anyway?”
Another experience as an RN altered how I saw the world. I worked as a sexual assault nurse examiner, which means after someone has been raped or sexually assaulted, my job was to collect forensic evidence. I hated it. I began to look at strangers on the street and in the store and thought they were all child abusers. I hated everyone, for no reason. If 1 in 4 kids are being abused at home, that surely meant that most of the people I saw everyday were abusing their kids in some way. It was dreadful. I was angry all the time. Again, the question begged in my mind, “what’s it all for anyway?”
Thankfully, this was about the same time Abby discovered the snowflakes. She taught me to see the world differently. Not that it is not what it is, but to discover joy in little things. If only we could all see the world through 3-year-old eyes; eyes full of wonder, joy and love. My children do not realize how much they taught me and saved me from myself on more than one occasion. As I started to look for beauty and goodness in the world, rather than the terrible, life became a little brighter once again.
Remember to see the beauty. Remember to see the wonder. Look for it and take none of it for granted. Remember that the snowflakes are snow. There is love and beauty in the world when we allow ourselves to see it through the eyes of a child.