The Background

A few days ago, I was driving home from work when I looked down the road and saw that I was a few hundred feet away from a wall of rain. Several thoughts came into mind. “Oh no, now? After how long of a day it was?” Was one of them. It was quickly shut out by the realization of how the rain glittered against the sunlight on it, making it look like that instead of a downpour, I was going to be driving through a curtain of diamonds and glitter. Finally, I clicked on my windshield wipers and drove through the downpour, feeling more optimistic about the day than I did before.

Later, a while after I made it home, my dad looked out of the window beside him, saw the sunlight shining through the clouds, and said, “Go look through the other window! There oughta be a rainbow!”

With my inner child’s heart racing, I leapt over to the window, pulled out my phone to take a picture, and first noticed that the window was dirty. Before I could even cringe fully, I looked past the dirt on the window and saw a beautiful rainbow, faintly peaking through the clouds. The light colors blended into each other and into the clouds behind it, making for a still blurry image. The blur of the sight still was something to savor with both a sense of peace and a child’s excitement.

It was then that a lesson that I had learned previously was sinking in a little deeper: to look past what’s right in front of you and take time to enjoy the beauty in the background.

When we look at what’s directly in front of us, we tend to forget the deeper meaning or that there is more going on behind that thing in plain sight. We often forget to look past the dirt and gloom in our world to see the beauty that’s usually not that carefully hidden in the background.

For me that day, it may have been a long, hard week, but there was beauty in the hard work. It made the peace of the glittery curtain of rain and the beauty of the rainbow on the other side of the dirty glass that much more beautiful. It made my time with my dad that much more enjoyable, and the recliner I slept in that much more comfortable.

This concept can be applied to people, as well. When we choose to look past what we observe on them, whether it be their scars, their color, their clothes, or their accents, we can see the character within them, hear the words they want to say, and learn more about them.

Maybe that Mexican man you met in the store last week has a newfound love for cheeseburgers and really does want to learn and enjoy American culture. Maybe that white woman who was snappy over her cup of coffee this morning is in a stressful work environment, can’t find anywhere else to go, and is now thinking back and feeling bad for how she treated the barista.

My short time so far on earth limits my experience, so I hope that this is still a useful example: In healthcare, one of the most important things we do is learn to listen to what someone is trying to tell us when they can’t say it directly. We learn to listen for the moans of pain and what makes it better or worse. We learn to listen to the breathing to learn if what we’re hearing is normal or not. We learn to watch for little indicators on a person to see if they need something more than just a nap.

When we as people (and this goes for everyone, not just people in healthcare) apply this level of observation outside of work, we may not necessarily save lives, but we do learn more about the people around us and see more of the world we live in. We can understand the details that we don’t often pay attention to and understand what’s happening in the world.

Unless we choose to see beyond what’s directly in front of us and see what’s in the background of our world and our lives, we can’t begin to appreciate the world or the people in it. If we don’t appreciate even the little things in our world, we can’t really find peace or know love.

So I ask of you, do you think that you can look past what’s in front of you to learn about what’s in the background? Can you learn to understand the people around you and what they’re trying to say to you?