There should be a German compound word for the emotion you feel when you encounter a famous thing and realize you’d never actually seen it until that moment. (Ikonerwachen?)
I had seen a thousand images of the Sydney Opera House before my gaze landed on it unexpectedly as I was crossing the harbour bridge in 2010. I knew its iconic look from movies, travel websites, clipart collections, and Where in the World is Carmen San Diego — but only at that moment did I realize I’d never seen it before.
This happened again with the planet Saturn. From Mauna Kea in Hawaii, I saw the ringed planet in perfect focus through a large reflecting telescope, and it was spectacular. Voyager 1 photographs and textbook diagrams did not prepare my heart to see a real, physical object, hanging there before my eyes in empty space.
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I'm David, and Raptitude is a blog about getting better at being human -- things we can do to improve our lives today.
The ice cream example made me laugh. Even getting exactly what we wanted can turn straight into reaching for the next spoonful. Using just one inbreath as the starting point makes this feel much more approachable than setting out to “be still for twenty minutes”.