Infinity

Sunset was beginning towards the end of my walk yesterday afternoon. The clouds seemed to be pointing off into a far direction. The combination of the glowing and interesting sky and the silhouettes of winter trees caused me to stop and take a picture. I knew that it would likely sooner or later end up in a blog post. This morning I started to clean it up and tweak it a little and wondered what it would look like if I played with it in my Circular app, would a better blog post message reveal itself to me if I did. Seeing my world become tiny and floating in a sky filled with both clouds and light made me think of the word "infinity," a thing that cannot be counted or measured. Another way of describing infinity is to trade it for "boundlessness." After living through a year when our world was made so much smaller because of the need to shelter in place and social distance, we may feel that life and our opportunities have become strangely limited. They have, I think, only been clouded over by a pandemic whose quality is neither eternal nor infinite. The world has not stopped turning and, if we want to look, we can likely see that in many ways there are still boundless opportunities and qualities out there for our lives regardless of whatever personal limitations there may also be. I will unabashedly admit to being a seeker and I think I have become more of one as I have gotten older. I have developed a habit of looking for new possibilities in life. I am not content to sit back and look at what I have already done and accomplished because I had rather look for more things to do and accomplish. If I ask myself "why" these days, I tend to answer myself with "why not." I remember a book that I had as a child called "The Little Engine That Could" whose message can and should still resonate for all of us no matter our age or level of infirmity. We can if we keep looking toward infinity and not get trapped by the finite. Yes, it is true that there are always limitations of one sort or another, but often I think they are either challenges to us to look harder or to look for something different. And when we do, we can discover things about ourselves and our lives that are far better than we could have ever dreamed. Below is the original "non circular" image for comparison.