Windows

“The windows are always the same, but where you are determines what you see.”

With the places I’ve been and the things I’ve seen, I think back to what I thought when I’d look out the window.

I imagine being 4 years old looking out the window of the top of the capitol building in Bismarck. I thought my city was so big then. I thought that place was so big that I would never be able to explore it all.

I imagine being 7 years old and looking out the window of the top of the Space Needle in Seattle. My perspective changed. I saw mountains, and an endless amount of water on the horizon. It was pure wonder, amazement, joy. The world was no longer kept to my hometown, in my mind it expanded further to bigger things and bigger places.

I imagine being 16 years old looking out the window of our team baseball bus to Omaha. It was my first time being away from my family for over a week. I remember thinking how weird it felt to not have them around. I remember feeling scared and alone but also filled with excitement.

I imagine being 19 and looking out the window at the interstate as I drove my car filled with all my belongings to a city only a few hundred miles away from my hometown. Things were finally changing. Life would no longer be the same again. That drive felt different than when I was a kid and we’d go to visit family. That drive was no longer a weekend trip. Going home would become the weekend trip. I was actually alone this time.

Now I am 23. I look out the window of my house I have lived at in my time here. I used to think it was such an ugly view looking at the back of some retail stores. But I think I’ll miss it. I won’t miss the view but I’ll miss looking through that window. That window reminds me of all of the ways I’ve felt in these 4 years here. It reminds me of opening my blinds to check if there was snow every day after Halloween. It reminds me of looking to see if the sun was shining so I could take my bike out on a ride. It reminds me of how cool I thought it was that I could see my work building from my window.

If I were to go back and look through some of those same windows, I might remember the feeling I had then, but I will never be able to recreate it.

YOUR PERSPECTIVE CHANGES WITH EVERYTHING YOU SEE.

Everything is so much different when you look through the window.

You see what is going on outside, but you aren’t actually there.

You can only form ideas about what is happening. It is like watching something on a TV screen.

Not being outside the window allows you to think about and reflect on what you are seeing.

You start to appreciate things differently when you watch them through the window. My hometown doesn’t seem so monotonous when you watch it from 30 stories up. It gives me a view of how beautiful the city is. The way the river cuts between two cities and the way the bridges unite them. The view from above gives you a new perspective that makes you feel differently about the same things you disregarded before.

At some point, the place I call home now will no longer be the place I call home. Somebody else will be looking through this window and will see something completely different than me. I’ll just be able to remember what I felt when I looked through it.

That’s really all you can remember…

Feeling.

I hope that I can remember all these views I’ve had. That’s why I make it a priority to write things down each day. Because as my life changes, the way the world looks in my mind changes. Sometimes I like to think back of what it felt like to look out that window before I had the view that I do now.

It is always changing.

You always think you’ll remember until you don’t.

Then those things that you wish you’d remember have gone.

The only way you can recall them is if you go back to a place that reminds you of them.

You go back to look through that window.

Maybe one day I’ll close my eyes for the last time and all I’ll see is a bunch of different mes looking through windows. Then I can try to remember what each one was thinking at that time.

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Thank you for reading!

My goal is to inspire self-improvement in others through my personal stories and experiences.

This is The Exploration.