I want to start this post off with two doses of honesty. 1: I love technology: computers, movies, video games, all that great stuff. 2: I spend too much time sitting in front of screens. It's slightly ironic that a film, in part, opened my eyes to this but that's beside the point. The movie I'm talking about is The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. If you haven't seen it yet, go now before it's completely out of theaters and turns all 'ghost cat' for a few months during that in-between the silver-screen and home screen period.
Yes, the film has been called heavy-handed on the 'go live your life' mantra, and it is a bit on the formulaic side, but it more than makes up for both of these so-called 'issues' with it's genuine, inspiring heart and soul, as well as its beautiful cinematography and score/soundtrack.
Interestingly enough, before I even went to go see the film I had been ruminating on the idea of the inherent beauty in this world, and how we often miss it because we're so busy texting and computing and worrying about what we have to do next. The awakening, or renaissance (just because I love that word), came about when I started my car a few months ago and looked up to see that my windshield was covered in the most beautiful design of frost and snowflakes. It looked like someone had taken a spirograph and mathematically calculated out a design entirely unique and specific to my ol' Trailblazer's windshield.
This was a few days before I heard the news that Paul Walker had died. Scanning through some of the articles that were posted in the aftermath, I found two beautiful quotes from the much-loved celebrity, humanitarian, and generally all-around nice guy:
"I go surfing and snowboarding and I'm always around nature. I look at everything and think, 'Who couldn't believe there's a God? Is all this a mistake?' It just blows me away."
"Surfing soothes me, it's always been a kind of zen experience for me. The ocean is so magnificent, peaceful, and awesome. The rest of the world disappears for me when I'm on a wave."
After seeing the frost on my windshield, I'd already been toying around with writing a Slam Poem about Fibonacci and patterns in nature, but Walker's outlook seen in the above quotes sealed the deal. Here's what I came up with:
Designed
If you'd like to listen instead click here
They say if you lift a seashell up to your ear and hold it just right, you might hear the beckoning sigh of the ocean. The entire expanse and unfathomable fathoms of the greatest water body in our universe echoing out from the discarded dwelling of some seemingly insignificant invertebrate, like a child murmuring into a tin can.
But have you ever taken the time to reach and pluck a shell from the beach and really look at each of its spirals, its edges, its grooves, its pattern. Maybe if you had it would surprise you. It would open your eyes to patterns in other places. Maybe if you weren’t so busy holding screens up to your faces and running all the every day races you might pause for a breath and find traces of those patterns.
It’s like starting your car on a frigid winter morning and ignoring the spectacular fractals the cold night air silently stenciled on your windshield while you slept unaware. The mathematical snowflaking design of repeating geometric shapes that are so perfectly arranged and yet so fragile that when you clicked your wipers on without looking you missed them.
But I’ve seen the fractals on a pane of frosty glass and the petite patterns on the petals of petunias and the sequenced sequin scales on a sea snake and the camouflaged coat of colors on a chameleon and drifting diagrams depicted in the desert’s dunes and the elegant curve of her neck bespeckled with freckles just so.
And let me tell you. When I open up my eyes to those sights its hard to believe that there’s even a chance that this all happened by random happenstance.
No! Fibonacci had it right. There is a design.
Because I don’t see a chaotic clumping of molecules, I see a grand architecture of building blocks. I see a carefully curated set of blueprints that were intentionally thought through and doted over.
And you see, if there’s a design, then there must be a designer.
So I guess now all that I’m trying to find is the reason why we became so blind to God’s design, that we can’t see He signed his name in every tree down to each leaf’s vein. Or in the veins in your arms that flow life from your heart.
The question that I just can’t get out of my mind is how we could find a seashell on the sand, hold it to our ear and not understand its not the ocean we hear. But the reassuring whisper of a loving engineer.
So are you inspired yet? Well if not, I'll list some songs below to get you moving. Either way, I have homework for you for this week (no matter what week it is that you're reading this).
1. Turn off the electronics and go outside - it doesn't have to be Nuuk, Greenland like Walter Mitty. Go to a local pond, lake, forest, field, whatever.
2. Find something beautiful - it can be anything if you just open your eyes and look.
3. DON'T take a picture. DON'T worry about telling your friends or posting about it on Facebook. Just take a moment and ENJOY it.
Music to get you out there!
Step Out - Jose Gonzalez^
Or just buy the Walter Mitty Official Soundtrack - It's seriously amazing.
And here's a YouTube Playlist with the above songs and more!
Suggest your own in the comments and I'll add them to the list (unless I don't like them - just saying).
Great post, Ben! Thanks for sharing your poem. It's amazing what we see if we only take the time and slow down long enough to really look.
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