Sights Seen And Reported

One of the things we forget, as we go about our daily lives, is that what we see, everything that parades itself in full glory before our eyes, is just for us and us alone. No one else gets to see, to experience, what we do in the same way. A split second of looking elsewhere, an the second person hasn’t seen the same as we have, even if we are standing side-by-side. A momentary distraction, and the moment has gone.

As a lover of writing letters to people around the world, these moments are of great importance to me, no matter how trifling and insignificant they seem to anyone else. For every person who writes to me, explaining that they have nothing of interest in their lives which can be related in a letter, I write back: I do not see what you see. Everything in your life is important, whether it be carrots and potatoes on a market stall, or the way sunlight falls across a market square, because you are the only one in the whole world who will ever experience this brief moment in time.