Well, yet another summer has come and gone. I find myself, yet again, in the airport, waiting for a flight. This time in Colorado. One of the things I thoroughly enjoy is watching people. Especially at the airport. It's such a strange conglomerate of people. Some people are rich or businessmen and fly many times a year, others it's a first time. Som are with families, and others by themselves. from the outside, they look so happy. For instance, a kid and his parents are sitting across the row from me. They seem to be having a jolly time: smiling, making jokes with each other, etc. But something inside me asks: but what is it like in real life? Is this how it is when they're not out in public?
Perspective is an interesting subject. A couple weeks ago, our family went up to Oregon on vacation. On this trip, I introduced my family to tide-pooling. The first time we went to the beach, my two littlest sisters went crazy. They were picking up almost everything they could find that wasn't sand. Most of what they picked up was broken and absolutely worthless. I remember the first time I went tide-pooling. I got so excited about a crab skeleton I found. Then a couple weeks later, I was enthralled with the rock-boring clams. Something else caught my eye a couple weeks later. But it seems that as we go on in life, the little things seem to become less important.
A while back, I was hiking with my little sister in the mountains. I was fascinated by the scenery and the overlook of the valley. Then my sister said: hey! Look! It's an ant! She was bent over, looking at the ground when there was so much going on all over. I thought: Man, I imagine there was a time when I was fascinated by ants as well. And now they're just so.... normal. I was so concentrated on the bigger picture.
This semester, I'm in a Plant Diversity Lab where we look at the diversity of animals. Yeah. You guessed it. Not animals but plants. The first week we were in class, we all took leafs and looked at them under microscopes. While everyone was off trying to get out of the lab as soon as possible, I was there, fascinated by the complexity of them all. How each of these organisms come from one cell, fertilized, then divided multiple times 'till it becomes an organism. Look at your hands for example. There are so many things that could go wrong in the development of your body. And yet, there are sooo many of us who look the same!
It's all about perspective.
On a side note, this post was supposed to summarize what I accomplished this summer. And I'll tell you in a nutshell. I met some of the coolest people ever. Texas is an amazing place and I have so many friends there now--at least I consider them friends... maybe they were thinking: this Spencer kid shoulda left before he got here... so annoying!! At least beth still calls me every once in a while...
Oregon was amazing: Also full of meeting awesome friends, and being able to learn about and study marine life... that was awesome. The redwoods, family vaca. to Oregon, spending the weekend in Logan. In summery (yes. pun intended): probably one of the best summers I've ever had.
