I was sitting near the window enjoying a light breakfast the other day and the warm morning sun was shining through the partially opened blinds and in the sunbeam were thousands of small particles floating in the beam. They appeared to have no weight as they danced up, down and around. They were very small but yet I, with less than perfect sight could see them plainly. It was really a merry sight as they were free, some moving much faster than were others. Not all the same in size as some were a little larger and moved, it seemed, a little faster than did the smaller beams. The warmth of the beam made me comfortable and I enjoyed the reflections and the shadows that the beams of light spread around the room. It was a lazy moment that I enjoyed so much. The reality of life shocked me back to life as I thought about the particles in the beam. They are visual in the beam, but they are everywhere, that same way but invisible outside of the beam. They are in the air all around us, and I wondered what the particles included. Could they include mites or other micro-miniature animals such as lice, etc. Returning to reality ruined my peaceful, beautiful sunbeam.
The experience actually made me think about and have empathy for drug abusers, how exactly I moved from sunbeams to drug abusers is not clear but I realized that those people that see the mites and other microscopic animals in the beam have to escape from the reality of it. Like those who, in life, see only abuse and hateful things. They must move away from the sunbeam where all of the pain and filth are seen. They escape reality because it seems too painful to face it head on.
A butterfly lights beside us like a sunbeam, And for a brief moment, its glory and beauty belong to our world, but then it flies again, And though we wish it could have stayed, we feel so lucky to have seen it and we will tell others of that experience later.
I thought about how important it is that we can’t see certain things in life. Or are able to see them only under certain conditions, like sunbeams. We might become paranoid if we could. The sunbeam example made me realize that we are breathing into our lungs every minute particles of matter not all of which are healthy I’m sure. Yet Heavenly Father designed our breathing and lungs to filter out much of the dust and mites etc. for our protection. To say, “What we don’t see is much like what we don’t know.” Both can be a blessing or a curse depending of course whether or not there is something we can do about either. One person seeing the dust in the beam as I witnessed may start wearing a filter type face mask all the time for fear there might be some micro-germs in the mix. A medical student having studied and learned about germ technology and how illnesses are contracted may also become paranoid and try to go only to those places where he knows there are sterile conditions, he may not marry for fear of the germs passed between lovers. That, my friends is how we move from sunbeams to paranoia, from sanity to insanity, all in a matter of minutes. Myself, I choose to sit in the sunbeam and enjoy the dancing particles and think that they are aware and dancing for my enjoyment.