On Being Aware - Missoula, Montana

The following quote on our habits of sight - and a few others from the good Baron - provoked a solid "Yes!" from me. 

I have noticed that amidst circumstance's overwhelm, there will come a time of pause - even if it's the eye of the storm! -  when we can stop and choose how we see. If we will, we can see the bigger picture - not as a head-in-the-sand false optimism, but in the clear light of hope and generosity.
 
“To romanticize the world is 

to make us aware 

of the magic, mystery and wonder 

of the world; 

it is to educate the senses 

to see the ordinary as extraordinary, 

the familiar as strange, 

the mundane as sacred, 

the finite as infinite.”

 -Novalis 

(aka Baron Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg 1772-1802,

As quoted in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294)

& for those who will wonder: This tenacious little leaf was small as a trim, smallish index fingernail.