Small Change

Another fabulous detail about Beauport is that it changes. I could almost say you leave a different house than the one you enter because the light shifts in the hour’s length of a tour and the rooms develop a different atmosphere. An object obscured by shadows at 10am is suddenly in the spotlight at 11am. Or colors that fade in the brilliance of the morning sunshine radiate as the sun sets on the harbor. It really is amazing that no matter how many times I go into that house, I always see something different – or at least, differently.

But, then, I only go in a couple times a month. Who’s to say that if I lived there, sleeping and eating and dwelling within those walls doing the mundane ordinary things of my life, that I would have as much fascination with the shifting position of the sun? It would still be there, but the normalcy would blind my appreciation.

Life is like that. Routine lulls us to the peaceful sleep of oblivion. It has to. I can’t imagine the sensory overload if I was constantly perceiving the change and beat shifts of every pulsing moment. But… every once in a while, it is good to shake myself out of reverie and click the lens into a new focus.

So this week, I moved my bed from one wall to the adjacent one. I tend to do that every once in a while. Move furniture. It’s part stress relief. Part commitment issue. I like to have things in flux, shifting into a new light, settling into a new placement. So I can see things differently. So I can open my eyes to a different view in the morning. And see things in a different light than routine has offered me day in and day out.

It’s amazing how the light changes the view. How it makes me see the value of a certain space I neglected. Or revealing the beauty of something that was always there, just invisible in the seeming satisfaction with the status quo.

Sleeper figured this out a hundred years ago. Change is good. It lets you see the world and not just get through it.